Howard Dean says U.S. is only democracy without universal health care

"Every other democracy in the world has a health care system that covers everybody, and we don't."
Howard Dean on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 in remarks on NBC's Meet the Press

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Howard Dean was chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The former governor of Vermont ran for president in 2004

It is true that most, if not all, industrialized democracies in Western Europe have systems that experts consider universal coverage, as do wealthier countries such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. But other democracies fall short, according to international statistics.

While dozens of countries are classified as democracies, Examine a few that are large and have been politically stable in recent years.

India. In the cities, and especially for families with means, the medical care ranks among the best in the world. But hundreds of millions of Indians are desperately poor, and about three-quarters live in rural villages. For these Indians, health care is sporadic and substandard.

Mexico. The United States' southern neighbor has a constitution that guarantees universal health care, and observers credit the Mexican government with launching Seguro Popular, a federal program that targets the uninsured. For better-off Mexicans, health insurance and facilities are similar to what is found in richer nations. But in practice, the Mexican system falls short of universal coverage.

Turkey. The other OECD nation besides the United States to fall short of full coverage is Turkey. The most recent statistics, from 2003, show that 67.2 percent of Turks were covered. A 2008 report by the U.S. Library of Congress found that "the rural population is poorly served by the health care system" and that "workers in Turkey’s large informal economic sector generally lack health coverage."

A spokeswoman said that the former governor "simply misspoke. He meant to say, as he has for years, that every other industrialized democracy" has universal coverage. If Dean had said that, he'd probably be right. But on Meet the Press , he didn't.

So Howard Dean --- Are you Kidding?