[sam h]

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When people say we have the best healthcare in the world they mean we have the best drugs, hospitals, doctors, equipment, and facilities. We also have shorter waiting lists and more healthcare options.

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I am not sure that drugs in America are any better than drugs anywhere else. They might be made primarily by American companies, but are still available elsewhere.

The big point is that the only sensible way to measure the quality of a health care system is to assess it based on two figures - the cost per capita and the quality of care averaged over the entire populace. I don't have figures at hand and can't be bothered to dig them up right now, but we have a very costly system that doesn't provide coverage to a huge swath of the population. If you are covered and cost isn't really an object for you personally, because you are employed somewhere with good benefits, then the system is great because at the top end the doctors and facilities are the best in the world. If you don't happend to be one of those people, the system sucks because you can't even get things like pre-natal care, which is ridiculous.