Life expectancy is not a good indicator of the health system past a certain point. Or at least of the quality of treatment. Just looking at smoking alone, dietary considerations aside - the US has like 2% more of the population smoking than Sweden. Considering smokers live considerably less long on average, 2% more smokers probably in of itself accounts for several months of the average life expectancy differential. There is also plenty of evidence that child mortality is not tied to the medical system as such, environmental factors, cultural factors, etc play into it. You cannot make a 1:1 comparison between quality of health care and these metrics you mention.

To get a picture of the actual quality, you have to look at data for life expectancy in the face of difficult, yet still treatable disease. Rates of longevity and survival for Heart Surgery, Cancers, trauma injury, etc. As well as effectiveness and comfort of treatments like joint replacements and therapy for the chronic diseases you mention. Speaking of chronic diseases, many of those are also not correlated with medical quality, at least their contraction.

http://newswithnumbers.com/2009/10/28/cancer-survival-revisited/

There is some data on cancel survival rates, as you can see - Socialist countries lag far behind the USA, sometimes to an astonishing degree.

Lifestyle is a cultural matter, not a medical one.

Also, in your partial rebuttal I am sure you were thinking of Canada - but Canada has but a small fraction of the overall population, and far far fewer advanced treatment centers.

Regarding litigation/regulation, the different structure of their system and different litigation environment give that aspect a different impact. A lack of lawsuits in the case of publicly owned industry often actually equates to a lack of recourse. I am not sure to what degree that is the case here, I have heard stories but they are just stories. Getting in depth English language info about the inner working of other countries can be difficult at times.

So, I actually do not have to try again - re-examine the links you attempted to make. Upon closer inspection, you will find your counters faulty.

Though I will say one thing in favor of the Swedes that works in their favor and they did right - by and large, their health system is actually administered at the local level, not the federal level. The amount of local control is unprecedented, and goes far above and beyond anything we have seen in the USA. This would certainly help improve the efficiency of the system, as local control improves accountability and responsiveness over Federal management.


For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)