Paul Hipp has penned this little diddy celebrating the fact that the World Health Organization ranks the US healthcare system the 37th best in the world.  His lyrics are below the fold.

The United States devotes 17.6% of its GDP to healthcare. And we fail to cover some 47 million people making the US the only OECD country that does not even attempt to cover everyone. Mexico and Turkey aim for universal coverage but have yet to achieve it. On average, OECD nations spend $2,964 per person and 8.9% of GDP. In the US in 2007, we spent $7,290 per person. The next highest dollar spending (normalized for purchasing power parity) was in Norway, which spent $4,763 per person, in Switzerland spending $4,417 per person, in Luxembourg at $4,162 per person, and in Canada $3,895 per person. You can access the OECD Health Data for 2009 for a complete overview.

Beyond the fact that US simply spends more, the life metrics are inferior not just to OECD nations but to even some middle income countries. The United States is ranked 26th in infant mortality among industrialized nations but that's an overall number. While infant mortality is 6.7 deaths per thousand live births in the US in 2006, for African-Americans the rate 13.7 deaths per thousand live births. The infant mortality rate among blacks is actually rising in 16 states. Meanwhile a country like Brazil has reduced infant mortality by more than half between 1990 and 2006, from 48 deaths per thousand live births to 19.

In the United States, life expectancy at birth increased by 8.2 years between 1960 and 2006, which is less than the increase of almost 15 years in Japan, or 9.4 years in Canada. In 2006, life expectancy in the United States stood at 78.1 years, almost one year below the OECD average of 79.0 years. Japan, Switzerland and Australia were the three countries with the highest life expectancy. Costa Rica, a middle-income country, now has a life expectancy of 78.8 years. We are clearly not number one in life metrics. The only top ranking that we achieve is in the category of medical bankruptcies. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. In the US, over two million Americans annually file for bankruptcy because of medical bills. From Physicians for a National Health Program:

1. Illness and medical bills were linked to at least 62.1% of all personal bankruptcies in 2007. Based on the current bankruptcy filing rate, medical bankruptcies will total 866,000 and involve 2.346 million Americans this year – about one person every 15 seconds.

2. Most medically bankrupt families were middle class before they suffered financial setbacks. 60.3% of them had attended college and 66.4% had owned a home; 20% of families included a military veteran or active-duty soldier.

3. 78% of the individuals whose illness led to bankruptcy had health insurance at the onset of the bankrupting illness; 60% had private insurance.

4. 69% of debtor families had coverage at the time of their bankruptcy filing; 60% of families had continuous coverage.

Clearly, we are doing something wrong.

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Who hasn't heard this claim, the US has the best health care system in the world, most recently in a town hall meeting where a questioner expressed fear that our "best in the world" medical care system would disintegrate if a public option were made available.

The truth is quite different, as indicated by this 2000 World Health Organization evaluation of medical systems in 191 countries, which placed France's socialized single payer health care system at the top of the heap, while the US lagged behind in 37th  place.

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