The Problem With Ranking Countries’ Health-Care Systems

The oft-cited WHO ranking that said the U.S. has the 37th best health-care system in the world is dated and had problems even when it was new, WSJ stats maven Carl Bialik writesin his column today.

The ranking was published in 2000, and came up against a major problem: Good data weren’t available from many countries. So researchers used other measures, such as literacy rates and income inequality, to infer health data. The report’s editor in chief later called the findings “spurious” noting the lack of solid data.

Still, it’s worth noting that the U.S. doesn’t fare particularly well on some measures where there are good data — we’re 24th in the world in male life expectancy and 35th in the world in female life expectancy, Bialik notes.

At the same time, life expectancy is a product of many factors — not only the quality of a nation’s medical care, but also issues such as nutrition, smoking rates and the like.