More Anti-U.S. Bias From Reuters

Reuters editors put their anti-U.S. bias on display again today. They cite a subjective study to shill for socialized medicine, praise France and rip the United States. Get this:

France best, U.S. worst in preventable death ranking

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.

Okay, so what kind of "study" did these researchers do to come to this conclusion?

Researchers Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tracked deaths that they deemed could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked nations on how they did.

So, the whole study comes down to subjective evaluations made by these two researchers.

Then Nolte quotes a flawed statistic to back up their determination on the U.S.:

Nolte said the large number of Americans who lack any type of health insurance -- about 47 million people in a country of about 300 million, according to U.S. government estimates -- probably was a key factor in the poor showing of the United States compared to other industrialized nations in the study.

That 47 million number has been shown by many others to be a false statistic; for example, it includes people covered by a spouse's plan. But Nolte readily says that flawed statistic was a key factor in their determination.

I would not accept work this shoddy from a freshman undergrad. But it's enough for the Reuters editors to run with.