Infant Mortality

Or, shall we say, reason number 679 we need national health care. According to an article in today's NYT, "In 1960, the United States ranked 12th lowest in the world, but by 2004, the latest year for which comparisons were issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that ranking had dropped to 29th lowest." Yeah, well, we're still ahead of Bulgaria and Romania. A couple of other quotes:

"In 2006, 6.71 infants died in the United States for every 1,000 live births, a
rate little different from the 6.89 rate reported in 2000 or the 6.86 rate of
2005. Twenty-two countries had infant mortality rates in 2004 below 5.0 infant
deaths per 1,000 live births, with many Scandinavian and East Asian countries
posting rates below 3.5."

Yeah! We're doing nearly twice as well as those other guys! Oh, wait a minute...

Uh-huh. And on top of that, we spend nearly twice as much per capita on health care as other industrialized countries. "We’re spending twice what other countries do," Ms. Davis said, "and we’re falling further and further behind them in important measures like infant mortality." The American way: Spend twice the money for half the benefit.

So according to the graphic attached to the article, we are now in a three-way tie with Slovakia and Poland, and behind Cuba and Hungary.

Read the article.