http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba649
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODAzMGMzNWJjMmFlOTE5ODE5Yjg0MTF...
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzI2YWMxYzU5ODI1MzcwNjJiMWNjNDB...

It should be fairly easy to figure out where I inserted my own thoughts about the "facts".

Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
Questions: Americans survive better than Europeans for common cancers. Since Americans have lower life expectancies then Americans either have lower survival rates for other killers or Americans die of common cancers at a significantly different rate than Europeans.
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.
Questions: Interesting that Fact No. 1 compared Americans with Europeans while Fact No. 2 compared Americans with Canadians. Does this mean America has a higher mortality rate than Europeans but lower than Canadians? Does this mean that Canadians have a better survival rate than Americans for common cancers?
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.
Questions: Other developed countries is an interesting term. Does it mean all developed countries; most developed countries; or just the ones listed here? What percent of the people taking statins are on Medicare, which closely resembles a government run single-payer system?
Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4] Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer:
• Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
• Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a pap smear, compared to less than 90 percent of Canadians.
• More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16 percent).
• Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with less than 1 in 20 Canadians (5 percent).

Questions: Again, Americans are compared to Canadians. What about other countries? What about the fact, and I do mean fact, that Canadians, even though they have less preventive cancer screening live longer than Americans? Obviously, Fact #2 shows that Canadians have a higher mortality rate than Americans. So shouldn’t this fact be combined with Fact #2?
Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."[5]
Questions: This fact seems quite strained. Below-median income means something different since the rich poor divide is substantially different in Canada than in America. White Canadians appear to be compared with all Americans. Of course, I assume a huge number of the native Americans of both countries are below-median income. Excellent health and fair or poor health are mentioned. Why is there no mention of the numbers of people in very good health not mentioned? Are there far more Canadians in that group?

Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long - sometimes more than a year - to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6] All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7] In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8]
Questions: What percentage of Americans who get hip replacements or radiation treatment are on Medicare? However, this does seem to be one area where America is far better than the UK or Canada. How does America compare to Japan and the rest of Europe?
Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."[9]
Questions: The liberal press claims that people on Medicare are the most satisfied Americans when it comes to health care. Is that correct?
Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]
Questions: This seems to be identical to Fact #7. Canada has more government control of health care and a significant portion believe that reform is needed. Canadians are less satisfied with their healthcare than Americans. However, even the Conservatives in the UK and Canada are firm believers in national health care and none of them would ever consider adopting anything like the current American system.
Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]
Questions: I don’t think anyone has ever argued that America doesn’t have the most high tech tools for health care. However, there is an economically optimal number for the number of CT scanners in America. Should we have 40 per million, 30 per million, or 20 per million? I don’t know but I do know that we should be sure there is a need for a very expensive machine before we pay for it.
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [See the table.]
Question: Isn’t this an example of where America is subsidizing the rest of the world? Why should America pay for all the research that is then used by the rest of the world?
Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.
Conclusion: It is possible to cherry pick facts that support that America has the best health care in the world. How can a conservative economist claim that it is a good deal for America to spend significantly more than any other country when the value of the goods purchased, (medical care), is not significantly better than the rest of the world?
Scott W. Atlas, M.D., is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Stanford University Medical Center. A version of this article appeared previously in the February 18, 2009, Washington Times.