Amateur Megalomania

CNN.com – U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says – May 9, 2006

Today we have a report from ‘Save the Children’ conncluding that the United States is a lousy place to be a newborn (and no, we aren’t talking about dodging Roe vs. Wade).

An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

I can’t help but be suspicious about things like this.  If you read the entire CNN piece, you don’t find a quote from a single person who might dispute this conclusion.  No equal time is given to those that might not care for the political spin of this report.

Tinker said Japan was among a number of nations highly ranked mainly because they offer free health services for pregnant women and babies, while the United States suffers from disparities in access to health care.

But anyway…I heard similar stats last year, and I remember some interesting elements that went unreported. So I dug it up here.

That fact has led to a widely accepted conclusion among public health people in the U.S. that these rates are “caused” by poorly distributed health care resources and can be “solved” by adopting a socialized government-paid system of health care.

We heartily disagree.

Let’s look at the numbers.

While comparing statistics among countries can be tricky, in the case of infant mortality figures, the comparisons are downright treacherous. For starters, different countries count differently.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) definition, all babies showing any signs of life, such as muscle activity, a gasp for breath or a heartbeat, should be included as a live birth. The U.S. strictly follows this definition. But many other countries do not.

Switzerland doesn’t count the death of very small babies, less than 30 cm. as a live birth, according to Nicholas Eberstadt, Ph.D., Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute and formerly a Visiting fellow, Harvard University Center for Population and Developmental Studies. So, comparing the 1998 infant mortality rates for Switzerland and the US, 4.8 and 7.2 respectively, is comparing apples and oranges.

So by fighting for each premature or marginal birth, the US is punished in this studies for higher infant mortality. Seems to be an important fact to me, but you won’t find that in the CNN piece. Not when it serves the myth of ‘American Health Care Sucks”.

Filed under: Politics