June 23, 2009 05:55 PM UTC

Health Care: Post's Vincent Carroll Needs a Lesson in Logic

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• by: dlof

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

In today’s Denver Post, columnist Vincent Carroll uses some absurd logic to echo the fringe-right-wing’s argument that the American health care system isn’t broken.

I’ll start with this gem…

Admittedly, the United States does spend more on health care, at nearly 16 percent of its gross national product, than any other country. Even relatively big-spending Switzerland, France and Germany devote only 11 to 12 percent of GDP on health care.

On the other hand, we’re also wealthier than other countries. As people grow richer – here, in Europe and any place you care to name – they tend to devote more resources to their health. So in the natural course of affairs, we should be spending more than others, although probably not as much more as we do.

I’m not sure how Mr. Carroll’s world works, but as I have gotten wealthier (and that’s a pretty thin use of the term), I have devoted a smaller percentage to health care.  For example, I require insurance for a single person, which costs, say, $600/mo.  If I make $2,400/month, I’m spending 25% of my income.  As I grow wealthier, and make, say, $6,000/mo, that percentage drops to 10%.  I don’t spend more, proportionally, as I get richer.  That’s absurd.

Mr. Carroll goes on to argue that WHO rankings are meaningless using a strange variant of a red herring.

But what about the allegedly inferior results? Let’s first dispose of that 37th place ranking, since it’s become a staple of the indictment of U.S. health care at least since Michael Moore exploited it in his movie “Sicko.” To appreciate how strange the ranking is, you really have to ask yourself just one question: Would I prefer to be treated for a serious ailment or injury in Oman, Portugal, Greece, Colombia, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Chile, Dominica and Costa Rica as opposed to the United States?

If you answered no, along with most other sane people, you have begun to see the problem: All of those nations, some of them quite poor, appear above the U.S. in the oft-cited WHO ranking. Meaning the ranking must be flawed.

Call me a bit crazy, but that list does not contain the names of 36 nations (it’s incomplete).  It does, however, contain the names of two European nations, cloaked by four Middle Eastern countries (aren’t we experiencing some tension with various Arab/Middle Eastern countries), and four Central/South American countries (isn’t illegal immigration from Latin America another hot-button issue).  I’m impressed, because that’s a crazy-good red herring, soaked in the mercury of xenophobia.

The rest of the column is pretty much unreadable, but it includes several straw men, including an absurd argument about how the L.A. Lakers lost ground in a post-season survey because they had the resources to do better.  Applied to the U.S. health care system:

The rankings are also adjusted “to reflect a country’s performance relative to how well it theoretically could have performed.”

Call me crazy, but shouldn’t we get the best imaginable health care system if we’re going to throw 16% of the GDP of the richest nation on Earth at it?