For the richest, most powerful country in the world, that spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other country (about ten times as much per capita as Mexico, for example), this is not impressive.


I admittedly don't know a whole lot about why the current health care system costs so much, but it seems to me that it costs more in the US because the US is footing the bill for research & development of new drugs. If that's truly the case it makes our extremely expensive healthcare somewhat more palatable (to me at least).

Now to the gist of the argument. Larry makes a very god point that to compare statistics we need a level playing field otherwise the statistics simply don't mean much. Where the table shows correctly a level playing fied, ie in the US you have a very good argument.

the point is not so much that the US has better or worse infant mortality statistics than communist dictatorships, but rather that the stats are bad compared to other developed nations. The table I posted shows that the largest problems are in the black and native communities, in which the rates are down there with countries like Jamaica and Saudi Arabia.

The disparity between the infant mortality rate between the races in the US is disturbing. Obviously we need a better safety net for low-income families without insurance. How to do this without driving up our healthcare rates or taxes even higher is a question I'd like answered.

BTW I would really prefer to see a table that shows the infant mortality rate based on insurance and income, because I think the issue resides there more than it does with race.

-Steve G.

PS another tip about the tables. Its easier to format the table in notepad, then drop it between the pre-tags then to try and line up the spacing in the post box using the preview button. Unfortunatly I thought of that after going to all the work using the preview tag.