“A fresh report from the prestigious Commonwealth Fund concludes that ‘despite spending more on healthcare than any other industrialized nation, the US overall continues to fall far short on key indicators of health outcomes and quality.’ The report found that even with lavish spending the United States ranked ‘last among 19 industrialized nations when it comes to premature deaths that could potentially have been prevented by timely access to effective healthcare.’ Given the Commonwealth Fund reputation for gold-standard reports [sic], this work is taken seriously throughout the healthcare world.” [editor’s note: The extremely biased Commonwealth Fund issues reports based primarily on how much GOVERNMENT funding goes into healthcare spending; it is unreliable data for this alone, and hardly “gold-standard” reportage! - SAT] (07/30/08)