Mark Thoma Is Unhappy with Greg Mankiw...

Mark Thoma http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/11/mankiw-beyond-t.html tells us that Mankiw's latest on health care might raise an eyebrow or two... http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/02/business/wbcolumn03.php:

"Beyond those health care numbers." By N. Gregory Mankiw. Saturday, November 3, 2007: Here are three true but misleading facts about health care that politicians and pundits in the United States love to use to frighten the public. The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance.

The differences are indeed significant. Life expectancy at birth is 2.6 years greater for Canadian men than for American men. Among women, Canadians outlive Americans by 2.3 years. Infant mortality in the United States is 6.8 per 1,000 live births, compared with only 5.3 in Canada. These facts are often taken as evidence for the inadequacy of the U.S. health system. But a recent study by June and Dave O'Neill, economists at Baruch College, from whom these numbers come, shows that the difference in health outcomes has more to do with broader social forces....

Americans are more likely than Canadians to die by accident or by homicide... these differences... teach nothing about the U.S. system of health care. Americans are also more likely to be obese, leading to heart disease and other medical problems... attributable to its ability to supply high-calorie foods inexpensively. Infant mortality rates also reflect... the prevalence of infants with low birth weight... correlated with teenage motherhood. Whatever its merits, a Canadian-style system of national health insurance is unlikely to change the sexual mores of American youths....

[T]he 47 million includes about 10 million residents... illegal immigrants.... The number also fails to take full account of Medicaid... millions of the poor who are eligible for Medicaid but have not yet applied. These... are uninsured in name only. The 47 million also includes many who could buy insurance... 18 million of the uninsured have an annual [family] income of more than $50,000....

In 1950, Americans spent about 5 percent of their income on health care. Today the share is about 16 percent. Many pundits take the increasing cost as evidence that the system is too expensive. But increasing expenditures could just as well be a symptom of success.... [I]ncomes are growing, and it makes sense to spend this growing prosperity on better health.... Those looking at reform plans should be careful not to be fooled by statistics into thinking that problems are worse than they really are...

Mark understates things.

Does Canada lack an ability to supply high-calorie foods inexpensively?

Low-birthweight babies are due to the failure to push prenatal care as well as to teenage motherhood, which is itself more the result of a failure to push birth control information and technologies than the "sexual mores of American youths."

The millions of the poor who are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid will be signed up when they show up at the emergency room, but they are not getting the care that might keep them from winding up at the emergency room.

But the thing that should have led the article to be sent back for a rewrite is a very relevant fact that is somehow omitted. In 2003 the U.S. spent $5711 per capita on health care, while Canada spent $2998 http://www.oecd.org/health/healthdata; it's not just that the U.S. has worth health status outcomes than Canada; it's that we proportionally spend $800 billion a year more than Canada does, and yet in aggregate and overall have less than nothing to show from it.

Readers should not be fooled by the omission of relevant statistics into thinking that problems are not as serious as they really are.

Somebody in the New York Times editorial staff should have questioned this before they ran it. Shame on them.