If America has the best health care system in the world, as some people like to say, then the setups in other countries must really be crummy.
How come? Well, check out the disheartening results of a poll just out from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. Fifty-five percent of adults surveyed gave the U.S. health care system a C or D, when asked to assign it a grade. Eleven percent gave it an F.
Can we send the health system to its room until it gets those grades up?
Familiarity trumps data when it comes to picking a hospital, the poll finds. Most people — 57 percent — would chose a hospital they or someone they know has had experience with over a hospital that does well on quality measures — 38 percent.