Why Say No to Universal Health Care? part 2

I know that there are many factors that impact the life expectancy of people living in a particular country. One those factors is health care. It is not the only factor, but it is certainly an important one. I find it intriguing that Sweden, Canada and Great Britain deliver good enough health care to their citizens to make the life expectancy in each of those countries greater than it is in the United States. In 2004, life expectancy for men in the United States was 75.2 years for men and 80.4 years for women. In the same year, life expectancy in Great Britain was 76.6 years for men and 81 years for women. In 2005, life expectancy in Canada was 78 years for men and 82.7 for women. In 2006, life expectancy in Sweden for men was 78 years and 83 years for women.

These three countries all have some form of so called “socialized” medicine. From everything that I hear and read about socialized medicine in the mainstream media it surprises me that any country with such a system, much less three of them, can provide good enough health care to its citizens for them to enjoy a life expectancy greater than the citizens of the United States. Health Care is not the sole determining factor when it comes to life expectancy, but I would expect it to be significantly lower in countries that have a socialistic system of health care. Yet, here are three countries that do socialized medicine well enough to be not significantly less than or close to but greater than that of the United States in life expectancy. That just does not seem possible. I would think that with our health care system we should be living ten or fifteen years longer than people in any other countries.

Questions just seem to lead to more questions. How is possible that three countries with socialized medicine have life expectancies longer than ours? What gives? If social medicine is so bad, why are people who have it living longer than us?

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