Columnist argues our health care is rather shabby

One of the arguments against universal health care is that we already have the best health care in the world so why would you want to change it to a socialized bureaucracy. Nicholas D. Kristof, in an op-ed column in today's New York Times, debunks the basic premise of that argument:

"Partly because so many Americans fall through the cracks and don’t have insurance, life expectancy is higher in most of Europe than in the United States. Even the people of Cyprus live longer than Americans, according to United Nations figures.

"Meanwhile, American children are twice as likely to die by the age of 5 as children in Portugal, Spain or Slovenia. And the World Health Organization found that an American woman’s lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is more than three times that of a woman in Greece, Spain or Germany.

"Meanwhile, Americans spend $6,800 per person to get these second-rate results, about double what is paid in Canada or much of Europe. It’s true that Canadians and Britons wait longer for non-urgent medical procedures than we do. But we have to wait a bit longer than Germans do. "

He goes on to argue that if President Obama succeeds in gaining universal health care for American families, "even gradually, he has a chance to join the pantheon of truly great presidents like F.D.R. himself."