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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:27 pm Post subject: Re: Why is South Korea's healthcare ranked 58? |
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| Who ranked it 58? What criteria did they use in their rankings? I would think that whoever ranked it would have given some indication of what they were looking at. |
WHO's Fooling Who? The World Health Organization's Problematic Ranking of Health Care Systems
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The World Health Report 2000, , prepared by the World Health Organization, presented performance rankings of 191 nations' health care systems. These rankings have been widely cited in public debates about health care, particularly by those interested in reforming the U.S. health care system to resemble more closely those of other countries. Michael Moore, for instance, famously stated in his film SiCKO that the United States placed only 37th in the WHO report. CNN.com, in verifying Moore's claim, noted that France and Canada both placed in the top 10.
Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems. They are not. The WHO rankings depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions� some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares.
The analysts behind the WHO rankings express the hope that their framework "will lay the basis for a shift from ideological discourse on health policy to a more empirical one." Yet the WHO rankings themselves have a strong ideological component. They include factors that are arguably unrelated to actual health performance, some of which could even improve in response to worse health performance. Even setting those concerns aside, the rankings are still highly sensitive to both measurement error and assumptions about the relative importance of the components. And finally, the WHO rankings reflect implicit value judgments and lifestyle preferences that differ among individuals and across countries. |
The WHO ranked South Korea number 58. This critique comes from Cato, a libertarian think tank. Though it makes some valid points. E.g. -- Should equality in health care be weighted as opposed to say quality in health care. If that were the case, then Zimbabwe would have the world's finest health care; just something to think about. |
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No_hite_pls
Joined: 05 Mar 2007
Location: Don't hate me because I'm right
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:42 pm Post subject: Re: Why is South Korea's healthcare ranked 58? |
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| Pluto wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Who ranked it 58? What criteria did they use in their rankings? I would think that whoever ranked it would have given some indication of what they were looking at. |
WHO's Fooling Who? The World Health Organization's Problematic Ranking of Health Care Systems
| Quote: |
The World Health Report 2000, , prepared by the World Health Organization, presented performance rankings of 191 nations' health care systems. These rankings have been widely cited in public debates about health care, particularly by those interested in reforming the U.S. health care system to resemble more closely those of other countries. Michael Moore, for instance, famously stated in his film SiCKO that the United States placed only 37th in the WHO report. CNN.com, in verifying Moore's claim, noted that France and Canada both placed in the top 10.
Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems. They are not. The WHO rankings depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions� some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares.
The analysts behind the WHO rankings express the hope that their framework "will lay the basis for a shift from ideological discourse on health policy to a more empirical one." Yet the WHO rankings themselves have a strong ideological component. They include factors that are arguably unrelated to actual health performance, some of which could even improve in response to worse health performance. Even setting those concerns aside, the rankings are still highly sensitive to both measurement error and assumptions about the relative importance of the components. And finally, the WHO rankings reflect implicit value judgments and lifestyle preferences that differ among individuals and across countries. |
The WHO ranked South Korea number 58. This critique comes from Cato, a libertarian think tank. Though it makes some valid points. E.g. -- Should equality in health care be weighted as opposed to say quality in health care. If that were the case, then Zimbabwe would have the world's finest health care; just something to think about. |
Zimbabwe is ranked 155 according to WHO  http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
France is 1, Italy 2, Canada 30, and the United States 37. http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/index.html |
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jaykimf
Joined: 24 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:11 am Post subject: |
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"WHO�s assessment system was based on five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system�s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs)."
http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_world_health_ranks.html |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:28 am Post subject: |
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Seems like perfectly reasonable criteria.
And France being #1 sure fits in my experiences. Canada is a land of waiting lists and Korea still hasn't gotten the whole germ theory of disease idea down, yet somewhat cheap.
The French system is excellent. |
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greedy_bones
Joined: 01 Jul 2007
Location: not quite sure anymore
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:03 am Post subject: |
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While I am all for single payer health care and would prefer the systems of the rest of the developed world, I do agree that the report is using circular reasoning.
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| The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance |
If you include the portion of the of the domestic product as one of your ranking criteria, you can't then say that you would expect a higher rank because of it. It's similar to saying "Even though I eat more food than anyone else in the world, I'm really fat." |
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jaykimf
Joined: 24 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:13 am Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
Seems like perfectly reasonable criteria.
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Maybe. But you could just as easily choose a different set of perfectly reasonable criteria that would yield completely different rankings. The rankings are really meaningless unless you understand what the rankings are based on. Interestingly,
"In designing the framework for health system performance, WHO broke new methodological ground, employing a technique not previously used for health systems. It compares each country�s system to what the experts estimate to be the upper limit of what can be done with the level of resources available in that country. It also measures what each country�s system has accomplished in comparison with those of other countries." http://www.photius.com/rankings/who_world_health_ranks.html
So, A wealthy country with access to advanced technology might suffer in the rankings versus some dirt poor country with few medical resources, because the poor country really did the best they could with virtually nonexistent resources. Of course that doesn't mean the WHO rankings are wrong. It means you have to understand what exactly they are ranking. |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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| VanIslander wrote: |
| No post-lavatory handwashing? |
They're too worried about contracting Mad Cow Disease to concern themselves with such trivialities. |
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No_hite_pls
Joined: 05 Mar 2007
Location: Don't hate me because I'm right
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Korea still hasn't gotten the whole germ theory of disease idea down |
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