Only in America: Worst Health Care in Developed World

From Reuters:

"The United States fails on most measures of health care quality, with Americans waiting longer to see doctors and more likely to die of preventable or treatable illnesses than people in other industrialized countries, a report released on Thursday said.

Americans squander money on wasteful administrative costs, illnesses caused by medical error and inefficient use of time, the report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund concluded.

The United States fell from 15th to last among 19 industrialized nations on this measure from 2006 to 2008. The report estimated the U.S. health care system could save 100,000 lives if it matched Japan or France, the top performers."

What's different about American health care? It's controlled by insurance companies for their profit and everybody else's suffering.

On top of that, the money taken in by insurance companies just to administer their increasingly punitive and criminal system is the highest in the industrial world, double Japan's and six times that of the most efficient country, Finland.

The rate of infant mortality in the U.S. is more than double Sweden's, and three times that of Japan.