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"...they are getting better results on infant mortality..."

I think you have to be careful to compare apples to apples. We have a LOT of uninsured, illegal alien women accessing our system to deliver babies without prenatal care. That affects infant mortality rates. Level that playing field and I bet our numbers look pretty good. And, as the article states, mother mortality is on the rise under the British health care system. I haven't seen any indication that's happening over here.

Also, another thing that is never counted in US-European healthcare comparisons is that our huge monetary investment includes the vast majority of the medical research and development done worldwide, the benefits of which are shared with the rest of the world at very little cost.

"I think you have to be careful to compare apples to apples." Hence my qualifier on the statement of the word 'statistical'. If you factored out those in this country who are not covered by private or public health I'm sure you'd get a better idea of the overall quality of our medical care. Indeed, we rank 1st in the world in responsiveness of our medical care. But if we can not beat these countries out on the stats (we should probably come up with better metrics so that we do; lies, damn lies, and statistics), we are going to have a harder slog in terms of improving our public policy in ways that make our system less like theirs instead of more.

Britain is catching up to us at a maternal mortality of 13/100,000 (2006) up from 11/100000 (2000). We have 20/100,000 (2000). I do not have data for 2006, so I do not know if we are trending up or down.

As for medical research, our federal drug funding is 6 cents per capita. Our total NIH funding is about $104 per capita. I'm not sure totals like that are that large compared to our spending levels on services. Do not forget also that foreign countries contribute to medical research in the US in the form of prescription drug costs.

I think most of the medical economists are thinking now that medical expenditures are rising because demand is so high it is pushing us into huge marginal costs. The emphasis and expectation on responsiveness with our medical system is part of that.

My wife pointed out last night that our healthcare policies are a drive towards fiscal conservatives adopting nanny-state ideas. The specific example was the trans-fat ban. By covering obesity related medical expenses we are not punishing people fiscally for their bad choices, but instead having government step in to legislate against those choices. This has the effect of splitting libertarians and fiscal conservatives on some issues.