Global Health: How the US Stacks Up

The other day I came across this clip of a recent presentation by Hans Rosling, Swedish professor of global health:



About 11-and-a-half minutes in, he breaks down the correlation between GDP and child survival rates in OECD countries (as Rosling puts it, "the country club of the UN"). As you can see, the US is a bit of an outlier: While its per capita GDP exceeds that of any other country, its child survival rate is at the low end of the OECD set. You can take a closer look (and play around with different variables and country trends) at Rosling's interactive "Gapminder" map. To be sure, child survival in the US is quite high when compared to the world as a whole. Still, its location within the OECD constellation shows a noteworthy departure from the usually positive wealth/health correlation.

In a post last week, I mentioned that President Franklin Roosevelt proposed an "economic bill of rights" back during the Great Depression/New Deal era. One of his proposals was "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." His successor, Harry Truman, followed up by calling upon Congress to establish a national comprehensive health insurance program in order to "assure the right to adequate medical care and protection from the economic fears of sickness." Lobbyists for the American Medical Association (among others) worked tirelessly to oppose the initiative, though, and with the Cold War heating up, Truman's health care plan was easily branded as "socialistic" and never enacted into law. Nearly a half-century later, then-Governor Bill Clinton revived Truman's cause in his 1992 campaign for the presidency. As president, he appointed a Taskforce on National Health Care Reform to propose a comprehensive, universal healthcare plan. The Clinton health care plan was ultimately derailed by the so-called "Republican Revolution" of 1994.

In 2008, health care is a major presidential election campaign issue yet again. Do you think the 44th president will be able to achieve what Truman and Clinton strived for but ultimately failed to accomplish? What obstacles would the candidates face in implementing their respective health care plans? If implemented, how far will their plans go towards improving Americans' health?