And here is a non-Ann coulter source for looking at the American healthcare system vs. our international friends...There is really a biased way of measuring the differences in medical systems and it is slanted toward the socialist models...
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHealth.html
from the article:
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Life expectancy and infant mortality are two measures that are widely cited, yet seldom questioned. This is unfortunate, because life expectancy and infant mortality tell us little about the efficacy of a health care system.[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Life expectancy and infant mortality are powerful tools for those who support some form of socialized medicine. On those measures the United States fares worse than all other industrialized nations. Most other industrialized nations have some form of government-run, universal health insurance. Thus, the reasoning goes, America's inferior performance on life expectancy and infant [/SIZE][/FONT]
[SIZE=-1][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]mortality is due to its heavy reliance on a system of private sector care.[/FONT][/SIZE]
for example:
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]Some statistics may assume interaction with the health care system, but the phenomena they measure are not ones on which the health care system can have any meaningful impact. Take, for example, the rate of cancer incidence. While this statistic assumes interaction with the health care system (an incidence of cancer cannot be known without the diagnosis of a health care professional), there is little a health care system can do about the rate of cancer. Rather, cancer incidence is affected by factors such as genetics, diet, lifestyle, etc., over which the health care system has no control. Thus, to be an adequate measure of the effectiveness of a health care system, a statistic must measure a phenomenon that health care professionals can actually affected.[/SIZE][/FONT]
and:
More robust statistical analysis confirms that health care spending is not related to life expectancy. Studies of multiple countries using regression analysis found no significant relationship between life expectancy and the number of physicians and hospital beds per 100,000 population or health care expenditures as a percentage of GDP. Rather, life expectancy was associated with factors such as sanitation, clean water, income, and literacy rate.8
on infant mortality rates:
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][SIZE=-1]But infant mortality tells us a lot less about a health care system than one might think. The main problem is inconsistent measurement across nations. The United Nations Statistics Division, which collects data on infant mortality, stipulates that an infant, once it is removed from its mother and then "breathes or shows any other evidence of life such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles... is considered live-born regardless of gestational age."16 While the U.S. follows that definition, many other nations do not. Demographer Nicholas Eberstadt notes that in Switzerland "an infant must be at least 30 centimeters long at birth to be counted as living."17 This excludes many of the most vulnerable infants from Switzerland's infant mortality measure.[/SIZE][/FONT]