That seems like a bit of an overstatement[0] considering all the categories that the US isn't #1, e.g. Life expectancy (#49) [1]. Granted, these rankings are quite old, but you can pretty easily find others, for example Hans Rosling's presentations on health care.
EDIT: This is not a dig at the US as such. I just think it's time for a reality check for many people.
[0] Or, rather, the US doesn't seem to be very effectual at improving the situation.
Actually, the US probably does lead in life expectancy... As usual, you can make the data do anything you like, but this methodology makes a lot of sense.
I may be off my rocker, but it seems kind of weird to specifically discount murders and such when calculating life expectancy. I mean, I get that the health care system probably can't have much effect on murder as a cause of death, but life expectancy is life expectancy no matter what eventually ends up killing you.
(My reference to Hans Rosling was more of an aside, I didn't mean to conflate average life expectancy with the standard of health care. I apologize if that wasn't clear.)
You're totally correct, but so is the paper discussed in the WSJ link.
Different measures of life expectancy for different purposes.
It's a bit like the inequality data "showing" that the US has higher post-tax&transfer inequality than does France. -News flash- nations with stronger social safety nets have stronger social safety nets!
It seems that the pertinent measure would be pre-tax&transfer income inequality... a measure which just so happens to show the US and France have identical GINIs. But you won't read that in the NYT...
That seems like a bit of an overstatement[0] considering all the categories that the US isn't #1, e.g. Life expectancy (#49) [1]. Granted, these rankings are quite old, but you can pretty easily find others, for example Hans Rosling's presentations on health care.
EDIT: This is not a dig at the US as such. I just think it's time for a reality check for many people.
[0] Or, rather, the US doesn't seem to be very effectual at improving the situation.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_the_U...