Scott Atlas on American Health Care

Scott Atlas talks with host Russ Roberts about the U.S. health care system. Atlas argues it is top-notch relative to other countries and that data that show otherwise rely on including factors unrelated to health care or on spurious definitions. For example, life expectancy in the United States is unexceptional. When you take out suicides and fatal car accidents, factors that Atlas argues are unrelated to the health care system, the U.S. life expectancy is the longest in the world. Similarly, foreign data do not include as many at-risk births as U.S. data and the measure of a birth is not comparable. In a number of other areas including cancer survival rates, access to hip replacement surgery and waiting times to see a physician, Atlas argues that the United States is also at or near the top. The discussion concludes with a discussion of access to health care for the poor and the failure of Medicaid.