WHO'S FOOLING WHO?

The World Health Report 2000, prepared by the World Health Organization, presented performance rankings of 191 nations' health care systems. These rankings have been widely cited in public debates about health care, particularly by those interested in reforming the U.S. health care system to resemble more closely those of other countries, says Glen Whitman, an associate professor of economics at California State University, Northridge. For instance:

Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems. They are not, says Whitman. The WHO rankings depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions -- some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares...

[chief among it's biases is that it subtracts major point if the system is government run, claiming free market solutions are unstable. I.e., it's a joke.]

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