The UK Socialist Medicine, NHS, kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year. Worth it?

You need some educating. Countries with socialized medicine take the money in the form of taxes and they still can't afford it. You might like life in Cuba. Our poorest have a much better quality of life compared to Cuba. Your numbers are all propaganda. Socialized medicine puts us closer to the Soviet Union than have a strong military. Socialism is just another flavor of
totalitarian statism, along with fascism, communism, Naziism,
Progressivism and all the other variations of the same preposterous idea
that has plagued humanity for the past 100 years.

That idea is
that society ought to be ordered by a group of elite "planners" who
operate to implement their schemes through densely concentrated
government power.

Thus, a socialist is someone who is opposed to the very concept of human liberty.

A
socialist is someone who thinks of himself as a "scientific" thinker, yet
refuses to recognize the easily observable fact that during the last
100 years, every variation of statism has failed miserably, bringing
economic collapse, hardship and death to every society that has tried
it.

Even the impending collapse of Europe, and the economic peril
facing the United States, is not sufficient to inspire a glimmer of
self-doubt, a smidgen of question, in the mind of a socialist regarding
the viability of statism.

A socialist is someone who imagines
that there exists a big bottomless pot of money that belongs to nobody
in particular, and that the highest manifestation of statesmanship is
just to hand it out.
A socialist is someone who opposes human slavery only to the extent that the slaves are privately owned.

You have to ask yourself. If this rating was accurate, Why would the Prime Minister of France (ranked #2 on the list) come to the Us (Ranked 37th on the list), by flying right past France (Rankes #1 on the list) and by 7 other countries ranked higher than the Us.
Does that make any sense? Um No.
Why didn't Ted Kennedy and Sen Dodd fly elsewhere to get their cancer treatment.
Maybe Dodd could go to the UK (Ranker 18th) to get the treatment from prostate cancer that has a survival rate there of 77% when here in the US the 5 year survival rate is virtually 100%.

Because the report has nothing to do with the actual quality of health care.

Let’s be perfectly clear about this, the United States Health Care is second to none! Ask the tens of thousands of patients who travel internationally to the US every year for their health care. As an example of the quality of health care delivered in the US, Americans have a higher survival rate than any other country on earth for 13 of 16 of the most common cancers. Perhaps that is why Belinda Stronach, former liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and Cabinet member (one of the health care systems touted as “superior” to the US) abandoned the Canadian Health Care system to undergo her cancer treatment in California.1
But to understand how WHO derives this misleading statistic, which has been ballyhooed widely by both the media and politicians alike, you need to understand how it is created. WHO’s health care rankings are constructed from five factors each weighted according to a formula derived by WHO. These are:
1. Health Level: 25 percent
2. Health Distribution: 25 percent
3. Responsiveness: 12.5 percent
4. Responsiveness Distribution: 12.5 percent
5. Financial Fairness: 25 percent
“Health level” is a measure of a countries “disability adjusted life expectancy”. This factor makes sense, since it is a direct measure of the health of a country’s residents. However, even “life expectancy” can be affected by many factors not related to health care per se, such as poverty, homicide rate, dietary habits, accident rate, tobacco use, etc. In fact, if you remove the homicide rate and accidental death rate from MVA’s from this statistic, citizens of the US have a longer life expectancy than any other country on earth.2
“Responsiveness” measures a variety of factors such as speed of service, choice of doctors, and amenities (e.g. quality of linens). Some of these make sense to include (speed of service) but some have no direct relationship to health care (quality of linens). These two factors at least make some sense in a ranking of health care, but each is problematic as well.
The other three factors are even worse. “Financial fairness” measures the percentage of household income spent on health care. It can be expected that the “percentage” of income spent on health care decreases with increasing income, just as is true for food purchases and housing. Thus, this factor does not measure the quality or delivery of health care, but the value judgment that everyone should pay the same “percentage” of their income on health care even regardless of their income or use of the system. This factor is biased to make countries that rely on free market incentives look inferior. It rewards countries that spend the same percentage of household income on health care, and punishes those that spend either a higher or lower percentage, regardless of the impact on health. In the extreme then, a country in which all health care is paid for by the government (with money derived from a progressive tax system), but delivers horrible health care, will score perfectly in this ranking, whereas a country where the amount paid for health care is based on use of the system, but delivers excellent health care will rank poorly. To use this factor to justify more government involvement in health care, therefore, is using circular reasoning since this factor is designed to favor government intervention.
“Health Distribution and Responsiveness Distribution” measure inequality in the other factors. In other words, neither factor actually measures the quality of health care delivery, because “inequality of delivery” is independent of “quality of care”. It is possible, for example, to have great inequality in a health care system where the majority of the population gets “excellent” health care, but a minority only gets “good” health care. This system would rank more poorly on these measures than another country that had “equal”, but poor, health care throughout the system.
In summary, therefore, the WHO ranking system has minimal objectivity in its “ranking” of world health. It more accurately can be described as a ranking system inherently biased to reward the uniformity of “government” delivered (i.e. “socialized”) health care, independent of the care actually delivered. In that regard the relatively low ranking of the US in the WHO system can be viewed as a “positive” testament to at least some residual “free market” influence (also read “personal freedom”) in the American Health Care system. The American health care consumer needs to understand what th
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to understand what the WHO ranking does and does not say about American health. Don’t be fooled by “big government” politicians and the liberal media who are attempting to use this statistic to push for socialized medicine in the United States. It says essentially nothing about the delivery of health care or the quality of that delivery in the US. It does say that, so far, the American health care consumer has at least some personal freedom to seek the best health care available, and is not yet relegated to the “one size fits all” philosophy of government sponsored health care systems.
Susan Delacourt, “Stronach travels to U.S. for cancer treatment.” The Star, September 14, 2007.
Sally C. Pipes, “The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care”. Pacific Research Institute, pp 132-133, 2008.
http://www.healthandsharing.c...

http://healthinsurance.about....

Specifically:

One of the hallmarks of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law in March 2010 is the elimination of pre-existing condition requirements imposed by health plans.

Effective September 2010, children (below age 19) with pre-existing conditions may not be denied access to their parents' health plan and insurance companies will no longer be allowed to insure a child, but exclude treatments for that child's pre-existing condition.

Starting in 2014, this provision will apply to adults as well. Until 2014, the information below remains valid for anyone over age 19.

An important feature of HIPAA is known as “creditable coverage.”
Creditable coverage is health insurance coverage you had before you enrolled in your new health plan, as long as it was not interrupted by a period of 63 or more days. The amount of time you had “creditable” health insurance coverage can be used to offset a pre-existing condition exclusion period in your new health plan.

The bottom line: If you had at least a full year of health coverage at your previous job and you enrolled in your new health plan without a break of 63 days or more, your new health plan cannot subject you to the pre-existing condition exclusion.

For example: Greg L. decided to change jobs for better promotion opportunities. He worked with a recruiter and found a new job, which he started four weeks after resigning from his previous position. His new job offered similar health insurance and he enrolled in a family point-of-service plan. Although Greg is in good health, his wife has type 2 diabetes and one of his children has asthma.

Greg had worked for his previous company for two years and had no health insurance coverage for four weeks (less than 63 days). In spite of pre-existing health conditions in his family, Greg’s health plan was not able to impose a pre-existing condition exclusion period.

The thing is, anyone can be like me. I am not special. It is a matter of priority. We have a portion of the population that spends hundreds a month on cell phones, video games, big screen televisions, cars, bigger homes than they can afford, etc buy think tht others should pay for their health care. They take jobs that may be more fun or pay a little better but do not provide health care. Why should everyone else be punished because of that.

I do not see how it I relevant to the conversation but EVERYTHInG the government does is riddled with corruption, waste and inefficiency, particularly the military. Most idiotic democrats will criticize the military for being inefficient, but then demand a huge government that is in control of everything. I grew up in a dirt poor neighborhood. Unlike democrats, I do not see the poor as worthless. I see them as unmotivated and having a bad attitude. Tho is made worse, not better by the democrats who give them excuses, just enough han outs to not even try to make their lives better, and constantly tell them they they better not even try because the deck is stacked against them. I have seen many many very bright and very outgoing people that had every key to success except they never bothered to try. I had someone tell me, why bothe to go to college when you can live off the government and kick it all day. I have a neighbor that has a house comparable to mine and says she is unemployable and on full disability, yet works all damn day under the table. The government does not expect accountability at all.