And critics of the American health care system cite several other statistics that are also poor indicators of a health care system's quality. Let's see why. While a good health care system may, by intervention, extend the life of a small percentage of a population, it has very little to do with overall life spans. Critics of the American health care system who compare life expectancies are comparing apples and oranges. Of the industrialized countries with better life expectancies than the U.S., nearly all have overwhelmingly white populations of European descent.
None have large black populations.
The American population is a mixture of several ethnic groups - some with longer and some with shorter life spans than whites. Pointing to the average distorts the picture significantly. Critics claim that the second-best indicator of the quality of health care is infant mortality. However, the evidence shows that differences in infant mortality frequently reflect differences in genes, lifestyles and environments rather than in the quality of medical care. Data from the California Department of Health Services, for example, show that the average infant mortality rate was 8.6 deaths per 1,000 live births in the 1980s.