[tanderson92]

Indeed. And in particular, consider the thesis of the argument:

> Any statistic that accurately measures health-care systems across nations must satisfy three criteria. First, the statistic must assume actual interaction with the health care system. Second, it must measure a phenomenon that the health care system can actually affect. Finally, the statistic must be collected consistently across nations.

Says who? The authors use these benchmarks to determine if life expectancy and infant mortality are valid units of measurement. Their actual claim, implicitly, is that life expectancy is unrelated or unaffected by quality of the health care system. And the infant mortality's numbers are biased against the US (here their argument is better but why would the UN knowingly include such biases?). The argument they present is weak...to put it charitably.

[jtedward]

The thing is it's not even really an argument, it's a rationalization. It's so strange to me that someone would even try to argue that life expectancy doesn't reflect the quality of health care. what conceivably could be gained by attempting to prove such a counter-intuitive thing?

[tanderson92]

My reading between the lines is that the health care system is set up perfectly well to accommodate long lives, if and only if you can afford to access it. The authors actually controlled for GDP per capita, so they made their aims plain. Their explanations for poor health outcomes for disadvantaged minorities was also income related.

Not once did they ask the question "why are health outcomes so stratified by income and wealth in the U.S.?", because their ideology is that that is acceptable.