At Mises U this year, Timothy Terrell did a fantastic job of busting a lot of the myths out there about healthcare, in particular about the quality of US care. Some particularly noteworthy points:
1) America's life expectancy is often used as an attack on US healthcare, but this number includes a variety of factors that have nothing to do with medical care, including car fatalities, suicides, and drug abuse.
2) Infant mortality rate data from other countries is greatly skewed due to differences in reporting requirements. The US is also tends to be far more aggressive in resuscitating very premature infants, which is factored in to US data.
3) The mortality rates for specialized US care, particularly cancer treatment, is far better than most other countries. The US also scores much better in terms of wait times and patients-per-diagnostic machines.
Of course none of this should be seen as a blanket defense of the status quo. Dr. Terrell outlines a variety of ways that government makes US healthcare unnecessarily expensive. But the quality of American care should not be taken for granted.
When it comes to the debate over nationalized healthcare, the conversation about costs shouldn't be defined by dollars - but human lives.
Dr. Terrell's lecture, along with all other Mises U lectures, can be downloaded on Soundcloud or viewed on YouTube (the video for some lectures is still being worked on, but all will be available soon.)
