Jan 20, 2022
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-which-country-has-the
I.
If you’re like me, all you’ve heard about international health care systems is “America sucks and should feel bad, everyone else is probably fine or whatever”. Is there more we can learn?
Our guide to this question will be Which Country Has The World’s Best Health Care, by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. Emanuel is a professor of bioethics, but I’ve been told to be less reflexively hostile to bioethicists. He got in trouble a few years ago for a comment that got summed up as “life after 75 is not worth living”, but he never used those exact words, and his point about the dangers of excessive life-prolonging medical care is well-taken. He opposes euthanasia, which I interpret as demanding state-sponsored coercive violence to prevent torture victims from escaping, but I know other people interpret it differently. And he’s the brother of former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, but ... nope, can’t think of any extenuating circumstances for this one.
Still, Emanuel is one of a very few people qualified to compare international health systems. And