The National Wealth Service (II)

This is quite shocking, and really needs no further comment:

The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile), according to the latest World Health Organization figures. We rank 37th in infant mortality (partly because of many premature births) and 34th in maternal mortality. A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland.

More from Kristof writing a couple of days ago in the New York Times here.  For the wealthy, undoubtedly, the American health service will function - although, even there, the bangs they get for their bucks will be heavily outweighed by the inbuilt efficiencies they could get from other countries.

Sad, ain't it?  The most powerful nation on the planet is powerless in the face of the corporate lobbyists.