It's Brian Lehrer, and this is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Thursday, June 25th.

Which country has the world's best health care?

That straightforward question is the title of a new book by Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel,

an architect of Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act, of course, is Obamacare. And he's a frequent

commentator on the coronavirus pandemic as well. Ezekiel Emmanuel is an oncologist, bioethicist,

and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

He's vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Department

of Medical Ethics and Health Policy there, and he's offering health policy advice to the Biden

campaign, and I think I'm leaving a few things out. But we'll talk health policy and

health politics now, the dramatic new surge in virus cases around the country right now, and maybe

we'll find out which country has the world's best health care per the title of the book. Dr.

Emmanuel, thanks for coming on this morning. Welcome back to WNYC. Yeah, Brian, it's great to be back on your show.

So which country has the world's best health care? Oh, Brian, Brian. You're like my

students at Wharton. You always want to know the answer without the hard work. But the hard work

means you can retain it better and retain it for a long time.

So one of the things we did, and I was skeptical of all rankings that said,

this is the best country, mostly because, you know, the WHO did a ranking, France,

and Italy came out number one and two, and in most other rankings,

they don't come out in the top 10.

So I didn't like that.

We identified 22 separate metrics.

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