Guest Columnist Martha Dudley
Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) is the rate at which babies less than one year die. IMR in United States has declined steadily over past few decades from 26.0 per thousand live births in 1960 to 6.1 per thousand live births in 2000. The United States ranked 28th in the world in IMR in 1998 (NCHS, 2000), according to Vikas Singh, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Some countries receive good IMRs by simply not reporting deaths. Governments control the data sent to the United Nations.
The Canadian IMR went up when they started including data on premature or underweight babies. Other countries do not include these babies in their data, in order to improve their score.
In America, babies born preterm account for two-thirds of all infant deaths. Half of these deaths come from 2% of babies born before 32 weeks, according to Time Magazine Health Reporter Laura Blue.
Cuba is focused on low IMR at the expense of other health care. For instance, mothers of infants in Cuba die at a rate 4 to 5 times higher than mothers in America, according to Antonio M. Gordon, Jr. M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Gordon notes that care that can be used for propaganda purposes receive priority, unlike public hygiene and "other health services that are rationed, denied, simply ignored..."
The United States has a life expectancy lower than most of the industrialized world because the U.S. is ethnically a far more diverse nation than most other industrialized nations, according to David Hogberg, Ph.D. He explains that you cannot use IMR or life expectancy to measure a health care system.
"Life expectancy is influenced by a host of factors other than a health care system, while infant mortality is measured inconsistently across nations," writes Dr. Hogberg.
Columnist David Limbaugh quoted health care expert Sally C. Pipes, on the quality issue: "In measuring the quality of a health care system, what really matters is how well it serves those who are sick. And it's here that American really excels."
We have the best health care in the world but, if Americans remain silent, it will be replaced with rationed health care, an abortion mandate, euthanasia, more government intrusion in your life, and higher taxes. Tell Senators Warner and Webb to vote NO! on Obamacare.
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