This weekend, Sen. Hillary Clinton talked tough on health care.
"It is time to have quality and affordable health care for all
Americans," she said in East Las Vegas. Hillary brought forth
two women, including a breast cancer survivor, as proof the
American system needs HillaryCare. I thought of that breast
cancer survivor, in particular, as I read an important new
National Bureau of Economic Research paper by June O'Neill and
Dave O'Neill, two respected Baruch College economists, "Health
Status, Health Care and Inequality: Canada vs. the U.S." Canada
has universal single-payer national health insurance. In theory,
Canadians who get free health care as a government "right"
should be much healthier than Americans, who face more barriers
of cost to accessing health care, right? And by some widely
touted measures, Canadians are healthier -- both life expectancy
and infant mortality are better in Canada. But as these two
scholars point out, life expectancy and infant mortality "are
poor measures of the efficacy o