Artful Dodger:

> In the US, there is a 100 percent survival rate for those with prostate cancer within
> the first 5 years. In Canada it's about 95 percent. In the UK, it's 77 percent survival rate.

I was looking at some statistical data on health care systems. I found a good article in Wikipedia which compares the healthcare systems in Canada and the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_and_American_health_care_systems_compared

There is also an article that compares some healthcare statistics between Cuba and the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba

There is an article on the National Healthcare System in the UK:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service_(England)

I included Cuba there because Cuba is atypical. It is a poor country with few resources, but they make healthcare their top national priority and it is covered 100% by the state. Canadaand the UK stand one step below. In Canada 70% of the healthcare system being paid from public (government) sources. In the US 49% of healthcare is paid by the government, the rest comes from private sources (mostly private insurance frims).

I find that the statistics show some things being better in Canada, others are better in the US, others are better in Cuba, etc. I see no real statistical differences in some measures like Cancer survival and incidence rates. Some Cancers are better in the US, others are better in Canada. Child and infant moratility rates are slightly better in Cuba than in the US, but just marginally.

I find the one big difference is that US is the only wealthy industrialized nation to have no universal healthcare system. Low income families receive Medicaid, and that is where the complaints seem to be coming from. Medicaid will not cover many services that are covered by private insurance firms, and waiting lists on Medicaid services are very long. Although 47 million people have only Medicaid coverage, the overall health of the population is not statistically different from most countries with good healthcare systems.

I think people can nitpick at details of different healthcare systems. I find that the bottom line is if the lower income people in a country have available healthcare, then the health of the population improves tremendously. I think that healthcare reform in the US might be perceived as socialist, but if Obama succeeds in improving healthcare services for low income families, then long term statistics in the US could be as good as those as Sweden, Norway or Austria. Healthcare in those countries seems to statistically much better than Canada or the US.