Here you go…another reason why W.H.O rankings are biased and skewed.

World Health Organization ranking biased, not reliable
by Bob Weeks on July 13, 2009

in Health care

A letter in the Wichita Eagle written by Brad Beachy of Wichita makes the case for “so-called socialized medicine” to be brought to the United States. Part of Beachy’s argument relies on a ranking produced by the World Health Organization. That ranking has a number of problems.

The ranking Beachy refers to was produced in 2000, and hasn’t been updated since then. So it’s getting a little old. Worse than that, it contains a number of techniques and biases that work against countries that rely on markets instead of government to provide health care.

A recent paper from the Cato Institute provides some useful analysis of the World Health Organization rankings. (See WHO’s FoolingWho? TheWorld Health Organization’s Problematic Ranking of Health Care Systems)

For example, there are two sets of rankings. As the Cato report explains: “One ranking claims to measure “overall attainment” (OA) while another claims to measure “overall performance” (OP). These two indices are constructed from the same underlying data, but the OP index is adjusted to reflect a country’s performance relative to how well it theoretically could have performed.”

Using the OP rankings, the United States is number 37. But using the OA rankings, the United States is 15.

25% of a country’s ranking is based on “financial fairness,” which is determined by looking at the “dispersion in the percentage of household income spent on health care.” As the reports says “The FF factor is not an objective measure of health attainment, but rather reflects a value judgment that rich people should pay more for health care, even if they consume the same amount.”

The report notes this introduces a bias against countries that rely on market mechanisms for paying for health care.

There’s another problem with FF, too: “Put more simply, the FF penalizes a country because some households are especially likely to become impoverished from health costs—but it also penalizes a country because some households are especially unlikely to become impoverished from health costs. In short, the FF factor can cause a country’s rank to suffer because of desirable outcomes.”

The Cato study goes on to document additional problems with the WHO ranking. Problems with the rankings were noticed earlier, too. An earlier analysis of this report from Cato (We’re Number 37 in Health Care! concluded this:

Overall, the WHO rankings’ mathematical formulations serve only to distract attention from the authors’ underlying distaste for individual choice in health care. The report largely ignores the extraordinary benefits the American marketplace brings to health care worldwide, such as new drugs, advanced diagnostic instruments such as MRIs and CAT scans, and lifesaving therapies for cancer and heart-disease patients. Under a WHO-style health care system, lifesaving research and innovation would be stifled and individual choice would be discarded in favor of collective control. Bureaucrats would decide who receives care — and who does not — on the basis of statistical tallies that devalue the lives of the elderly, the disabled and the chronically ill.

By contrast, a free-market health care system upholds the right of every person to make his own decisions. Patients are given choices, not issued numbers, and doctors are freed from impersonal “expert panels” dictating what care they can and cannot provide. The WHO’s idea of government-provided universal health care is a fantasy that masks a system of dangerous, formula-based rationing. If you value your health, don’t trust the WHO.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp101.pdf

I saw the gentleman that purportedly claimed to have Parkinsons Disease, walking around the \"for health care side\" He sat down in front of me at one point across the driveway with his sign … I didn\’t see anyone talking to him. He just sat there. Why didn\’t the dispatch interview him? why didn\’t they \"get his story\"? why are we just seeing the \"anti-health care\" gets in his face…and trust me there were plenty of \"pro-gov\’t health care\" spewing more vile things than what the \"Dispatch\" video shows. Obviously there are always 2 sides to every story…which is why I stopped buying the Dispatch a couple of years ago.

Not giving the public the \"full\" story is a chronic issue with them.

As a nurse I have worked with many people with Parkinsons disease
( particularly when I was in nursing school) It is a sad and devastating disease displayed by uncontrolled movement and shaking of the body that eventually leads to a bedridden life and then death.
My casual observation did not see this man with the usual \"parkinsons\" tremors, he walked fine and other than his sign stating he had Parkinsons I wouldn\’t have noticed it.

Perhaps he was faking it…maybe he has the beginning stages….whatever the truth…you will never get it because the Dispatch, in there attempt at just showing the behaviors of one side and not the despicable behaviors of the other side…. wouldn\’t report it.
Typical Dispatch propaganda…and why they are a dying newspaper. If you currently get the dispatch… I\’de dump it and save yourself $20.00/month.

As for the gentleman who claimed to have Parkinsons disease…What IS your story? Why do you need the government public option? Where is your family to help you? Do you have a Church home that could offer you assistance? What can we as a community do to help?