What Do the U.S. and Turkmenistan Have in Common?

Foreign Policy came up with a list of “The World’s Worst Healthcare Reforms”. Keeping company with Russia, China, and Turkmenistan is the good old U.S. of A.: “The United States has the rare distinction of being both one of the world’s richest countries and having one of its least-functional health care systems. … [F]or the most part, the history of health reform in the United States has been a history of failure.” But it sounds like we still have a leg up on Turkmenistan: “In a frankly insane healthcare reform effort, [President Saparmurat Niyazov] restricted the public’s access to care by replacing up to 15,000 doctors and nurses with unqualified military conscripts. … He also implemented fees and created an ‘unofficial’ ban on the diagnosis of certain communicable diseases, like hepatitis.” [%comments]