I already explained why America's healthcare is so bad (private profit incentives), so I wont repeat myself.

The Yankees aren't good, its just that the other 29 MLB teams are so bad.

Not actually true.

1) Life expectancies are higher.  This isn't completly related to health though.  A perfectly healthy man could be stabbed to death with a knfe and it counts to life expectancy.

2) Infant mortality rate is higher in the US because we calculate it differently.  If something is born, and then dies at a young age... it's considered an Infant.  In Europeon countries babies have to be a certain size or weight before they are considered babies.  If a baby is born way to small to live it is not reflected in Infant mortality rates.

3) Healthiness is a very hard thing to measure.  When it comes to 5 year survival rates for the main 5 killers of people however... the US has better survival rates then most Europeon countries including the UK.

Honestly when it comes to health... healthcare is less important then you think... so is what you eat.  Culture... culture can mean as much if not more then both.

Two different countries, with IDENTICAL healthcare programs and demographics can have compleltly different results based on culture when it comes to things like life expectancy and diseases.  Which makes any arguement about different countries healthcare largely pointless.  Example.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/outliers.htm

No.  Size really does matter.   We've hat this argument before... however yes size matters a LOT when it comes to providing globalized healthcare.  It needs more layers of bueracracy as you need more and more layers of overseers. To prevent fraud and make sure people are doing their jobs correctly.  For example in the UK system decisions are made on a local level of about 150 healtchare councils.  These councils need to be watched by people.

Now say you've got over 1,000 healthcare councils.  You need like 7 times the people watching them unless you want to overwork them, additionally you need 7 times the people watching them... and you eventually need one guy at top.  So your going to end up adding layers.  With higher salaries.

Any international comparisons of healthcare systems are completly assinine though.  Look at the link in my post directly above this to realize why.

It's funny how research done a decade ago can still be ignored by people.  Only interpopulation healthcare studies hold any merit.

A GOP victory in 2012 would just continue the cycle.

To be honest I just think the entire American political system is aged and broken. It's completely dominated by two parties, lobbies are too powerful, and the actual electoral system is broken.

I wonder what America would be like under some form of MMP?

Okay, let's say you're making $8.00 an hour and you have to drive eighty miles a day roundtrip to work.  Now if you are paying $4.00 to $5.00 dollars per gallon to drive something like an older model Cadillac to work and paying $20.00 each week out of your paycheck for company health insurance (that won't even pay for a colonoscopy, bloodwork, and a ct scan when you need it) combined with other bills your $8.00 an hour isn't going to go very far.

Now you could say move closer to work.  But what if the cheapest apartment you can get in that city costs over $400.00 a month because they want to keep the riffraff from surrounding counties from living there, then how are you supposed to eat for that month?

Obama's plan is supposed to be to get everybody free health care which should allieviate having to pay for company healthplans that won't cover jack.  And since foreigners like Obama more than Bush (and Obama isn't trying to help his rich oil buddies get richer), then you haven't seen gas cost over $3.00 since Obama has been in office.

Where did you get that idea from?  Here are the CIA World Fact Book infant mortality rates, without your obscure samping methods.

This entry gives the number of deaths of infants under one year old in a given year per 1,000 live births in the same year; included is the total death rate, and deaths by sex, male and female. This rate is often used as an indicator of the level of health in a country.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

Again, size doesn't matter, urban and rural ratios matter.

What you are arguing for is that we could never compare different locations.  If we cant compare the United States to the United Kingdom, we cant compare Ohio to Pennsylvania or New York City to Boston.  Of course, no qualitative comparison (like health or well-being) is exact, but comparing like places is still appropriate and helps one reach accurate conclusions.  Quantitative comparisons go much farther, and here your logic would not allow you to say something so easily understandable as America is rich and Nigeria is poor, because they are in different places and have different sizes we cant compare them.  I'm sure a Nigerian would be happy to trade you places, while you wonder which country is the better one to live in.

You also forget to mention that as size increaseses, relative overhead costs decreases.  This is referred to as economics of scale.  There is a reason why Wal-Mart can out-compete smaller retailers and while still maintaining huge profits.  In government, this is even more relevant because top administrators are not paid high wages, for instance a level I Federal Executive (Secretary of State) only makes $200,000 a year, thats less than what most doctors in the United States make.  The president only makes $500,000 a year.  Compare that to the salaries of CEOs, where $50 million would nt compare with top earners.

One thing I have seen time and time again, in several countries, is established political parties gaining power and then using their power to repay the companies and special interest groups that got them elected; and the more established a political party becomes, and the longer they’re in power for, the more corrupt they become and the more they believe they’re "entitled to their entitlements". There are countless examples of this in Canadian politics, and this week two fairly large ones have been brought back to the forefront from the previous (Liberal) government; the long gun registry which was supposed to cost $2 Million but cost $2 Billion and was never audited correctly, and there is little evidence that it has done anything; and the awarding of a 10 year exclusive vaccine production contract worth (nearly) $350 Million to a single company who can't produce enough vaccine for all of Canada, and it appears that the only reason they were awarded this contract was they gave the Liberal Party a one time $56 Million donation the year the contract was awarded.

The difference between the US government and most other western democracies is that Americans have a two party system and (unlike other countries) they have no choice but to vote for one of two corrupt political parties. In almost every other democracy around the world, if they had political parties half as corrupt as the Democrats or Repbulicans several grass-roots parties would form and would win an election and gain power (possibly by creating a coalition). When a major party loses power it "goes into the wilderness" and only returns if it restructures and eliminates corruption so that people can trust them again.