Health Care: Ghana 1 US 0

Ghana routinely beats the US in football. But, it also seems to beat the US in providing health care to ordinary people. Timothy Burke, no stranger to Africa, reports that the waiting time to see a doctor at an ER in Fresno routinely averages nine hours. I have never spent more than two hours at the hospital in Legon. I went yesterday to see a doctor about renewing a script. I got there at 11:00 am. I saw a nurse and had my temperature and blood pressure taken by noon. I saw an actual doctor and got my script at 1:00 pm. This is the same pattern I have experienced here each of the last three times I have gone to the University of Ghana Hospital. Over all it seems amazingly efficient compared with Professor Burke's story out of Fresno. Now according to all the official statistics Ghana is a lot poorer than the US. So how come it can manage a working health care system and the US can not?