“The United States has the lowest life expectancy of 14 [industrialized] nations measured by the World Health Organization,” the article stated. Furthermore, “The infant mortality rate is higher in the United States than in other industrialized nations. In 2003, seven infants died for every 1,000 live births in the United States-the worst rate of 19 countries measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.”

Such news reports are common but misleading. The reason: Life expectancy and infant mortality tell us as much about a health care system as batting average and on-base percentage tell us about, well, soccer.

Studies on life expectancy find that it is related to factors such as gross domestic product, sanitation, diet and literacy. Health care spending and doctors per capita have no effect.

Infant mortality is measured too inconsistently between nations to be useful. Nations are supposed to count any infant that shows any signs of life, but many do not. Switzerland does not count any infant born under 12 inches long, while France and Belgium exclude any infant born before 26 weeks. By excluding so many at-risk infants, other nations make their infant mortality statistics look better than they are.

Indeed, using life expectancy and infant mortality can lead to some absurd conclusions. A recent blog entry at the Huffington Post gleefully notes that an island nation 90 miles off the Florida coast does better than the U.S. on these measures. The author titled the entry “Cuba Has Better Medical Care Than the U.S.”

Unfortunately, most journalists and the public at-large are often ignorant about the shortcomings of life expectancy and infant mortality. Left-wing advocacy groups prey on such ignorance. For example, Physicians for a National Health Program claims “the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates.” This well serves their agenda of “implementing a single-payer national health program” in the U.S.

Yet, it is single-payer systems like Canada and Britain that are broken, to the point of being deadly.

To control costs, both countries must ration health care by putting people on waiting lists and canceling surgeries.

In Canada, Diane Gorsuch had two appointments for open-heart surgery cancelled and suffered a fatal coronary before her third appointment. In Britain, Mavis Skeet had cancer surgery cancelled four times after which the cancer became inoperable. A British man, Brian Booy, became the ultimate victim of bureaucracy in that he was finally assigned an appointment for bypass surgery a year after he died from a heart attack. As the Canadian Supreme Court said upon ruling unconstitutional a law that banned private health care, “access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”

In many important ways the U.S. outperforms other nations in health care. For example, the U.S. has a higher five-year survival rate for various cancers-including breast, colon, cervical, lung, and prostate-than many other countries. A study in the British Journal of Surgery found that for most major surgeries the mortality rate in British hospitals was four times higher than in American hospitals.

Another study in the journal Circulation found that the five-year survival rate after a heart attack was higher in the U.S. than in Canada, due to the fact that we do more bypass surgeries and angioplasties here. Since the U.S. also does more of those procedures than any other country, the best bet for surviving a heart attack most likely is the American health care system.

So, the next time you read a newspaper story lament the dismal American health care system, be skeptical. Examine how the critics of our system compare it with the health care systems of other nations. Chances are they will use life expectancy and infant mortality as measures. If so, you can safely dismiss their criticism as meaningless.

David Hogberg is a senior policy analyst at the National Center for Public Policy Research.