McCain talks about his Health Care plan.

McCain attempts to defend his Health Care policy by saying that "big government" is bad for health care systems and he offers the British and Canadian systems as examples of what is wrong with systems in which "big government" plays a large hand.

There's only one problem with this claim. In the World Health Organization's ranking of health care systems both Britain (18th) and Canada (30th) come before the United States (37th) which comes just before Slovenia (38th) and Cuba (39th).

And, of course, studies have found that both the Brits and the Canadians are actually healthier than Americans.

Americans may share a common mother tongue with their Canadian and British friends, but when it comes to health care, they're speaking different languages. Their national health systems, emphasizing preventive care, appear to provide much better outcomes at dramatically lower cost than the ad hoc market-driven approach in the U.S. That's the clear message from two recent studies showing that the people of Canada and the UK are far healthier than Americans.

A Harvard Medical School study in the upcoming issue of American Journal of Public Health reveals that Americans experience suffer from a range of ailments and diseases at substantially higher levels than our neighbors to the north. Phone surveys of 3,500 Canadians and 5,200 Americans showed Americans 12% more likely to suffer from arthritis, 32% more likely to be plagued by high blood pressure and a whopping 42% more likely to have diabetes. Despite spending nearly double on health care per capita and smoking less than Canadians, the Harvard study revealed that Americans experience "higher rates of nearly every serious chronic disease examined in the survey."

So, by the examples McCain has chosen, big government appear to do health systems which are superior to his preferred private model. I wonder if McCain even checks his facts before he speaks, or if he simply allows his prejudices to decide what the facts should say.

Tags: John McCain, Health care systems, Britain, Canada, US, World Health Organisation ranking, Private, National health