Bucket Kicking In Britain & The USA.

Michael Moore has made a documentary, Sicko, about the US health care system in comparison to that of other countries such as Cuba, Canada and Britain. In one of his interviews last month he made the claim that :

'We are the last country in the industrialised world to have this system. The poorest child in Britain has a longer life expectancy than the average American child.'

As fabrications go that isn't even remotely plausible. The average life expectancies in Britain and the USA respectively are pretty close in any case 78.7 for the UK compared to 78.0 for the United States. It is difficult to say exactly how long the poorest people will live in the UK, but it is undoubtably true that life expectancy is far lower in lower income areas than in higher income places, currently the average Glaswegian lives ten years less than a resident of Kensington & Chelsea for example. So clearly the poorest child in Britain has a lower life expectancy than the average American.

PS. This isn't to say that the USA has a brilliant healthcare system, but neither does Britain, both the private insurance system of the USA and the statist NHS perform poorly in comparison to France's in between system.

PPS. It is also a mistake to asume that life expectancy is soley a product of healthcare, diet and lifestyle are extremely important.