Happy Planet Index (<link>)

2009 - Cuba ranked 7th and the USA ranked 114. I wonder why so many Cubans tie themselves to rafts to escape their happiness? Recently, a Cuban baseball player ran 20 miles away from his team staying in a Miami hotel, so that he could escape Cuban happiness. Can you imagine the terror that forced the Cuban to run a near marathon to escape happiness?

In 2006 America ranked 150th. Isn’t bizarre that a billion people from 149 nations ranked happier than America would immigrate to the USA if they could?

HPI has been cited by European Commission, the British Conservative Party and the European Parliament as better than GDP. Why?

This DOES stretch one's credulity a bit.

Human Poverty Index: (another feelings index) is relative as it give 1/4 of its weight ranking the population below 50% of median income. For example, most European nations would rank higher because Americans make 14 thousand $s more per Euro-person per year; therefore, far more Americans below the 50% median would still make more money than the European average. Also, illegal immigrants lacking English speaking skills are used against Americans, (1/4 the value as well). Essentially such indexes are meaningless.

BTW: No feelings indexes are empirical. All are subjective and meaningless to classical economists. Critics allege that feeling indexes depend on a series of subjective judgments about well-being that governments and left-wingers may be able to define in a way that suits their political interests.

WHO health system rankings:1 France26 Saudi Arabia30 Canada37 United States of America39 CubaFinancial Fairness: is 25 percent of the ranking, which rewards countries that spend the same percentage of household income on health care, and punishes those that spend either a higher or lower percentage, regardless of the impact on health

Health Distribution is 25 percent, which measure inequality in the other factors. In other words, neither factor actually measures the quality of health care delivery, because “inequality of delivery” is independent of “quality of care”.

Why did Belinda Stronach, former liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and Cabinet member (one of the health care systems touted as “superior” to the US) abandon the Canadian Health Care system to undergo her cancer treatment in California?

What is the implication of using such politically Marxist-skewed statistics on our national debate?

Stronach received her breast cancer surgery in the USA becuase she is a millionaire and could affford to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars that her treatment cost. Nobody is questioning the effectiveness of the US system, so long as you're rich enough to pay for it - which was the point all along.

God Bless America.

"Why did Belinda Stronach, former liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and Cabinet member (one of the health care systems touted as “superior” to the US) abandon the Canadian Health Care system to undergo her cancer treatment in California?"

She had surgery and treatment in Toronto, and one latter stage operation in California which she was referred to by her physician in Toronto. She continued treatment in Toronto after that.

And she's a conservative, not a liberal.

Look it up. Look up SOMETHING, for God's sake!

Canada:

1. According to a September 14, 2007, article from CTV News, Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach went to the United States for breast cancer surgery in June 2007. Stronach's spokesperson Greg MacEachern was quoted in the article saying that the US was the best place to have this type of surgery done. Stronach paid for the surgery out of her own pocket. Prior to this incident, Stronach had stated in an interview that she was against two-tiered health care.
2. When Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec, needed cancer treatment, he went to the US to get it.
3. In 2007, it was reported that Canada sent scores of pregnant women to the US to give birth. In 2007 a woman from Calgary who was pregnant with quadruplets was sent to Great Falls, Montana to give birth. An article on this incident states there were no Canadian hospitals with enough neo-natal intensive beds to accomodate the extremely rare quadruple birth.
4. A January 19, 2008, article in The Globe And Mail states, "More than 150 critically ill Canadians – many with life-threatening cerebral hemorrhages – have been rushed to the United States since the spring of 2006 because they could not obtain intensive-care beds here. Before patients with bleeding in or outside the brain have been whisked through U.S. operating-room doors, some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care

Wait times

1. One of the major complaints about the Canadian health care system is waiting times, whether for a specialist, major elective surgery, such as hip replacement, imaging procedures such as MRI or Cystoscopy, or specialized treatments, such as radiation for breast cancer. Studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that 57% of Canadians reported waiting 4 weeks or more to see a specialist; 24% of Canadians waited 4 hours or more in the emergency room.
2. A March 2, 2004, article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated, "Saskatchewan is under fire for having the longest waiting time in the country for a diagnostic MRI—a whopping 22 months."
3. A February 28, 2006, article in The New York Times quoted Dr. Brian Day as saying, "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years."The Canadian Health Coalition has responded succinctly to these claims, pointing out that "access to veterinary care for animals is based on ability to pay. Dogs are put down if their owners can’t pay. Access to care should not be based on ability to pay." The CHC is one of many groups across Canada calling for increased provincial and federal funding for medicare and an end to provincial funding cuts as solutions to unacceptable wait times [In a 2007 episode of ABC News's 20/20 titled "Sick in America," host John Stossel cited numerous examples of Canadians who did not get the health care that they needed.
4. According to the Fraser Institute, treatment time from initial referral by a GP through consultation with a specialist to final treatment, across all specialties and all procedures (emergency, non-urgent, and elective), averaged 17.7 weeks in 2005

High R&D costs are borne largely by Americans because most other western governments have imposed price controls on drugs, knowing that because actual production costs are small, the drug producers will sell to them at the low controlled prices. Absence of a market mechanism slows innovation in treatment and research. "Poor U.S Scores in Health Care Don’t Measure Nobels and Innovation",

Milton Friedman has argued that government has weak incentives to reduce costs because "nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own". The role of the government in health care should be restricted to financing hard cases. Universal coverage can also be achieved by making purchase of insurance compulsory.

"Once a large number of citizens get their health care from the state, it dramatically alters their attachment to government. Every time a tax cut is proposed, the guardians of the new medical-welfare state will argue that tax cuts would come at the expense of health care -- an argument that would resonate with middle-class families entirely dependent on the government for access to doctors and hospitals."

If you asked the Cuban ballplayer involved, you'd probably get something more like:

Can you imagine the millions of dollars available in major league baseball salaries that forced the Cuban to run a near marathon to escape having to play for mere subsistence?

Come on meadow muffin! If you're going to quote examples, you should at least try to find some that actually support your ignorant arguments.

How many Americans move to Cuba? Ever been to Miami?

In Canada, if you know a doctor as a result of being an old school chum, whatever, you can get into see him right away for that knee surgery you need. If you don't know a doctor and you fall and seriously injure your shoulder, you wait a month or two to see a surgeon with a necessary referral from you private practictioner. You have to wait another eight to ten months for the operation itself. In the meantime, you can hardly move your arm without pain and your private practioner gives you pain killers which you then become addicted to.

Ah, my dear Muffin,

Still going at it with your useless links? Again, unable to understand what you cut and paste. I guess I'll have to further educate you about the Canadian health care system. I'll wait on your next post though.