When lefties tell you that healthcare should be free, show them this

Nordberg said:
https://nypost.com/2026/05/14/healt...h-in-new-global-rankings-who-beat-us-and-why/
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Does this NY Post piece definitively prove anything consistent with this claim of Nordberg's?



No. The NY Post piece does not definitively prove Nordberg's specific claim (or the broader implication he is advancing with it).


What Nordberg claimed​


In the linked forum post (#75), Nordberg writes:


“What planet do you live on? Here are the best medical systems ratings. We are no.33, Our health ratings have been known for decades. We should be ashamed. Why do you lie so often?”
Click to expand...

He is responding to T. A. Gardner’s argument that socialized/universal systems produce worse outcomes than the US system in the vast majority of cases, and that the US system is not mediocre. Nordberg treats the US ranking of No. 33 as direct evidence of inferior “medical systems” / health outcomes under the US model, implying the ranking vindicates the superiority of the systems in higher-ranked countries (mostly European/Nordic ones with universal coverage).


What the NY Post article (and the underlying US News ranking) actually say​


The article reports the 2026 US News & World Report Best Countries rankings. The US placed No. 33 in the Health category (out of the countries evaluated). The top of that list is dominated by Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Sweden, Israel, and various other European countries.


Key details from the ranking methodology and reporting:


  • The Health category is an average of three subcategories: Mortality & Longevity, Public Health Preparedness, and Healthcare.
  • It incorporates life expectancy, mortality metrics, longevity/healthy life expectancy, vaccination rates, epidemic outcomes (including COVID deaths), medical research capacity, and related public-health measures.
  • US life expectancy is cited around 79 (or ~78.4 in some related coverage) versus higher figures in the top countries (e.g., Iceland ~83).
  • The ranking is not a pure “best medical systems” or pure clinical-outcomes ranking of healthcare delivery quality, wait times, cancer survival, specialist access, innovation, or patient experience. It blends population health results with preparedness and system measures.
  • The US still ranks very high overall in other dimensions (No. 1 in Culture & Tourism, No. 2 in Economic Development) and finishes No. 18 overall.

Why this does not “definitively prove” Nordberg’s point​


  • Ranking 33rd in this composite “Health” metric is consistent with long-standing data that the US has lower average life expectancy and higher rates of certain preventable conditions (obesity, drug overdoses, traffic deaths, violence, etc.) relative to peer high-income countries. It does not isolate the effect of the financing/delivery model (“corporate” vs. universal/socialized).
  • Many top-ranked countries have universal coverage systems, but the ranking does not demonstrate that those systems cause the better scores, nor does it control for confounders (demographics, culture, diet, violence rates, obesity prevalence, drug policy, geography/scale, immigration patterns, etc.).
  • US News itself notes challenges of scale and complexity for large countries like the US in pandemic response. Population health outcomes are heavily influenced by factors outside the healthcare system.
  • Claims about relative system performance usually require more granular metrics (cancer survival rates, amenable mortality, wait times for elective procedures, specialist access, innovation/output of new therapies, etc.). Aggregate rankings like this one are frequently criticized precisely because they mix outcomes with access/equity/preparedness measures and do not cleanly answer “which system delivers better results for comparable patients.”

In short: the NY Post article accurately reports that the US ranked 33rd in US News’s 2026 Health category. That ranking is consistent with the observation that US population health metrics lag many peers, which is the surface-level point Nordberg is making. It does not definitively prove that US medical systems produce worse clinical outcomes because of their structure, that “free”/universal systems are superior, or that the ranking refutes arguments about mediocrity, waits, or two-tier realities in other countries. Those are interpretive leaps beyond what the ranking measures.


grok.com

NY Post Health Ranking Doesn't Prove Nordberg | Shared Grok Conversation

Does this NT Post piece (https://nypost.com/2026/05/14/health/us-ranked-no-33-in-health-in-new-globa
grok.com grok.com
 
Nordberg said:
This shit is not hidden. https://www.numbeo.com/health-care/rankings_by_country.jsp I am sure you 2 know better. So what are you really doing?
Click to expand...


He's flailing now. How about this one?



No, this doesn’t rescue the claim either.


Numbeo’s Health Care Index is a weaker, more limited metric than the US News ranking, and it still doesn’t “prove” what Nordberg is asserting.


What Numbeo actually shows (2026 Mid-Year)​


US ranks 41st with a Health Care Index of 66.9.Top of the list: Taiwan (87.1), South Korea (83.0), Japan (79.9), Ecuador (78.2), Netherlands (77.6), Thailand (77.6), Austria, Finland, France, Spain, etc. Several European universal-coverage countries sit higher than the US; so do some middle-income countries. Canada is 35th (68.6), UK 19th (72.4), Germany 25th (71.3).


Critical limitations of Numbeo​


This is not an objective clinical or outcomes ranking. It is a crowd-sourced perception survey:


  • Users rate their local system on skill/competency of staff, speed, modern equipment, accuracy, friendliness, wait times/responsiveness, convenience of location, and cost (which is double-weighted).
  • Scores are self-selected online responses, filtered for spam but not representative or random samples.
  • Numbeo itself notes it measures perception, not hard outcomes (life expectancy, cancer survival, amenable mortality, infection rates, etc.).
  • Sample sizes vary wildly by country; some high rankings rest on relatively modest numbers of contributors.
  • Cost satisfaction is heavily weighted, which naturally penalizes high-price systems like the US even when clinical quality is high.

In short, it captures how people feel about access, waits, friendliness, and price more than it measures actual medical results.


Relation to Nordberg’s claim​


Nordberg used the US News No. 33 ranking to claim US medical systems are inferior and that “we should be ashamed,” treating it as evidence against the US model relative to socialized/universal ones. Numbeo produces a similar mid-pack US result driven by different (and softer) criteria. It is consistent with the broad observation that average American respondents rate their system lower on cost and waits than respondents in many other countries rate theirs. It does not:


  • Isolate the effect of financing model (private/employer vs. single-payer/socialized).
  • Control for demographics, obesity, violence, drug use, or other population-health drivers.
  • Measure clinical quality, specialist outcomes, innovation, or survival rates for serious conditions—areas where US performance is often stronger in other data sets.
  • Prove the systems ranked higher deliver superior care because they are free-at-point-of-use or government-run.

It is another perception-based ranking that places the US outside the top tier. Like the US News Health category, it is usable for discussion of access and cost satisfaction, but it does not definitively prove the stronger claim that US medical systems produce worse results or that the higher-ranked systems are superior as systems.
 
Diogenes said:
He's flailing now. How about this one?



No, this doesn’t rescue the claim either.


Numbeo’s Health Care Index is a weaker, more limited metric than the US News ranking, and it still doesn’t “prove” what Nordberg is asserting.


What Numbeo actually shows (2026 Mid-Year)​


US ranks 41st with a Health Care Index of 66.9.Top of the list: Taiwan (87.1), South Korea (83.0), Japan (79.9), Ecuador (78.2), Netherlands (77.6), Thailand (77.6), Austria, Finland, France, Spain, etc. Several European universal-coverage countries sit higher than the US; so do some middle-income countries. Canada is 35th (68.6), UK 19th (72.4), Germany 25th (71.3).


Critical limitations of Numbeo​


This is not an objective clinical or outcomes ranking. It is a crowd-sourced perception survey:


  • Users rate their local system on skill/competency of staff, speed, modern equipment, accuracy, friendliness, wait times/responsiveness, convenience of location, and cost (which is double-weighted).
  • Scores are self-selected online responses, filtered for spam but not representative or random samples.
  • Numbeo itself notes it measures perception, not hard outcomes (life expectancy, cancer survival, amenable mortality, infection rates, etc.).
  • Sample sizes vary wildly by country; some high rankings rest on relatively modest numbers of contributors.
  • Cost satisfaction is heavily weighted, which naturally penalizes high-price systems like the US even when clinical quality is high.

In short, it captures how people feel about access, waits, friendliness, and price more than it measures actual medical results.


Relation to Nordberg’s claim​


Nordberg used the US News No. 33 ranking to claim US medical systems are inferior and that “we should be ashamed,” treating it as evidence against the US model relative to socialized/universal ones. Numbeo produces a similar mid-pack US result driven by different (and softer) criteria. It is consistent with the broad observation that average American respondents rate their system lower on cost and waits than respondents in many other countries rate theirs. It does not:


  • Isolate the effect of financing model (private/employer vs. single-payer/socialized).
  • Control for demographics, obesity, violence, drug use, or other population-health drivers.
  • Measure clinical quality, specialist outcomes, innovation, or survival rates for serious conditions—areas where US performance is often stronger in other data sets.
  • Prove the systems ranked higher deliver superior care because they are free-at-point-of-use or government-run.

It is another perception-based ranking that places the US outside the top tier. Like the US News Health category, it is usable for discussion of access and cost satisfaction, but it does not definitively prove the stronger claim that US medical systems produce worse results or that the higher-ranked systems are superior as systems.
Click to expand...
Christ are you dishonest?.Our healthcare ranking has been broadcast for generations. If you are honest, you would deal with that fact You started with a claim about FREE healthcare. Where is there free heathcare? In most countries it is covered by taxes. Do you call that free? There are many rating systems. We suffer at the bottom in nearly all.
 
Diogenes said:
This oughta be good.
Click to expand...
Maybe like the Commonwealth fund rankings where they measure:

Access to care
Care process
Administrative efficiency
Equity

On Care Process the US is rated #2 by them. On all the non-healthcare, Socialized rankings, the US does terribly.

www.commonwealthfund.org

Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System

Analyze the 2024 "Mirror, Mirror" report to understand global health system performance and insights for improving health care quality and access.
www.commonwealthfund.org www.commonwealthfund.org

In other words, the Commonwealth Fund skews their ratings heavily in favor of socialized medicine and says the US system is terrible because it isn't bureaucratically efficient, fair and equal, and that in turn makes access uneven. But, they admit the US has one of the best actual provider systems in terms of care in the world.

Over at the Legatum Prospective, their rating system is unclear but they rate the US as 43rd in healthcare behind such luminaries in that field as:

The UAE
Cyprus
Montenegro
Chile
Saudi Arabia
Malta


Another Commonwealth study titled "Achieving Universal Coverage" ranks individual states. Unsurprisingly, deep blue states with the largest socialized health insurance systems, like expanded Obamacare Medicaid, come out on top.

www.commonwealthfund.org

U.S. Health Care Rankings by State 2025 | Commonwealth Fund

The Commonwealth Fund 2025 Scorecard ranks states’ health care systems based on how well they provide high-quality, accessible, and equitable health care.
www.commonwealthfund.org www.commonwealthfund.org

Doesn't matter if you die in some state's system, like New York's during Chinese Disease, their system is far more bureaucratically efficient, fair and equal, and gives good access to most. The care may suck, but it sucks fairly and equally!
 
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Nordberg said:
This shit is not hidden. https://www.numbeo.com/health-care/rankings_by_country.jsp I am sure you 2 know better. So what are you really doing?
Click to expand...
Yea, yea... Numbro uses the sites I listed to make their ratings. Maybe you should look at their actual data:

Understanding Health Care Indexes

www.numbeo.com www.numbeo.com

They even admit their system sucks, sort of...

It is important to note that Numbeo’s Health Care Index is based on user-contributed data and perceptions, which may vary. While the data could be subject to biases
 
Diogenes said:
The facts don't seem to support your assertions, Nerdsperg.
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They do. I provided a couple, and there are many more. Try to be honest; it is not painful. I have to stop changing your name into childish insults. That is wht you Trumpys do. You demean yourself.
 
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Nordberg said:
They do.
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Do they?

Nordberg said:
I provided a couple, and there are many more.
Click to expand...

Is that so?

Nordberg said:
Try to be honest; it is not painful.
Click to expand...

I don't suppose you have any personal experience in that regard, Nerdsperg, based upon your output here.

Nordberg said:
I have to stop changing your name into childish insults.
Click to expand...

Your urge to copy me is understandable, Nerdsperg.

The pattern is well-documented in psychology and cultural-evolution research. The classic work by Neal Miller and John Dollard (Social Learning and Imitation, 1941) explicitly described hierarchies of imitation. Within a group, people lower on a continuum of “intelligent social adaptation” tend to imitate those higher up. The less intelligent more frequently use matching/copying because they are less adept at reading environmental cues and generating adaptive responses on their own; ergo, watching and copying higher-intelligence individuals is a frequent pattern of behavior.

Nordberg said:
That is wht you Trumpys do.
Click to expand...

The rank hypocrisy in that claim is only matched by its inaccuracy.
 
Nordberg said:
They do. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2024/sep/mirror-mirror-2024 There is no argument about our poor performance in healthcare. We pay the most and h]get the lowest performance.
Click to expand...

Nerdsperg’s post (#93) claims: The Commonwealth Fund’s Mirror, Mirror 2024 report shows there is “no argument about our poor performance in healthcare. We pay the most and get the lowest performance.”


What the report actually says​


The 2024 Mirror, Mirror report (released September 2024) compares health system performance across 10 high-income countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It uses 70 measures grouped into five domains: Access to Care, Care Process, Administrative Efficiency, Equity, and Health Outcomes.


Key findings:


  • The U.S. ranks last overall (10th).
  • Top three: Australia (1), Netherlands (2), United Kingdom (3).
  • The U.S. ranks last or near-last in Access to Care (10th), Administrative Efficiency (9th), Equity (9th), and Health Outcomes (10th).
  • Exception: The U.S. ranks 2nd in Care Process (prevention, safety, coordination, patient engagement). New Zealand is 1st.

The report and accompanying materials repeatedly note that the U.S. spends the highest share of GDP on health care (around 16–17%) yet has the worst overall performance among the group, with shorter life expectancy, higher rates of preventable/treatable deaths, and worse equity/access metrics.


Assessment of the claim​


  • “We pay the most”: Accurate. The U.S. is an outlier on spending.
  • “Get the lowest performance” / “poor performance… no argument”: The Commonwealth Fund explicitly frames the U.S. as dramatically underperforming relative to these peers on the composite ranking and most domains.

Important caveats and context (for a full picture)​


  • This is not a pure clinical-outcomes or “best medical care” ranking. It heavily weights access, affordability, equity, administrative burden, and population-level outcomes (life expectancy, avoidable mortality). These are influenced by factors beyond the delivery system itself (obesity rates, drug overdoses, violence, traffic deaths, demographics, lifestyle, etc.).
  • The U.S. strong performance on Care Process is frequently highlighted as a bright spot even by the report’s authors.
  • Rankings like this have long been debated. Critics note that composite scores can penalize high-cost, high-innovation systems and do not fully isolate system design effects from broader societal factors. Other data sets (e.g., cancer survival rates for certain cancers, specialist access, medical innovation/output) often show stronger relative U.S. results.
  • “Lowest performance” here means last among these 10 wealthy nations on this particular index—not a claim about absolute quality of care available to insured Americans or global rankings of every country.

Bottom line: According to Nerdsperg’s citation and summary of the Mirror, Mirror 2024 findings, the U.S. does spend the most and ranks last overall in that comparison. The broader interpretive claim that this settles the debate on system design (“free”/universal vs. the U.S. model) is an opinion that goes beyond what the ranking itself proves, as earlier posts in the same thread already discussed regarding other rankings (US News Health category, Numbeo, etc.).
 
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There is no debate about the quality of medical care in America. The fact that so many have no access to healthcare means our numbers will be lower. We deny treatments that doctors want to use.
Our biggest problem is we have insurance companies that have no product at all, taking billions out of the system. Somehow ,they got the power to decide who should have specific treatments. That makes no sense. We pay them for nothing. The handling of insurance claims falls on doctors who have to provide a staff to handle the incredible amount of paperwork insurance companies create. This is an artificially expensive system. It cannot be defended by cost or results,.
 
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