When the World Health Organization did a survey in 2005, China ranked 136th in medical-care spending for its citizens.
That was much worse than such where-the-hell-are-they nations like Tongo, Togo, Benin and Lesotho. Cuba, which many in the US consider the most backward of the backward nations, ranked 55th.
The US? We were second, spending 15.4 percent of our gross domestic product on health care expenses, compared with just 4.7 percent by China. Only the tiny Marshall Islands in the Pacific, with just 62,000 citizens, beat the US by spending slightly more of its GDP on health care.
Keep those figures in mind this week because President Obama is about to be humiliated by the Chinese.
Like us, China has a major initiative underway to reform its health care system. In fact, just this year Chinese President Hu Jintao announced a blueprint for health care that was surprisingly like ours — all Chinese people should have access to affordable essential health care. Beijing, in fact, allocated $10.4 billion toward health care reforms in 2009.
But there’s a big difference: China has money to burn.
The US, meanwhile, has already burned its money — not only on excessively expensive health care, but on wars, economic stimuli, pork barrel politics, wasteful government programs and. . . well, a lot of other things.
In fact, our national debt rose last year by a flabbergasting $1.9 trillion, though Washington will admit only to a horrifying $1.4 trillion.
The US now has total outstanding debt of $11 trillion. The government of China owns $800 billion of that debt, while private citizens in that country probably are holding billions more.
So, as President Obama visits China to meet with President Hu this week, it’ll be like the student going to the principal’s office for a tongue lashing.
And while the photo opportunities will probably show nothing but smiling faces, our new, inexperienced president will undoubtedly be taken to the woodshed over his — and our country’s — profligate spending.
The lecture, in fact, already started last weekend when the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission chided the US for not keeping an eye on our banking industry.
And President Obama will have to sit there and take it.
Consider these numbers: China is allocating $10.4 billion in health care reforms to take care of its 1.3 billion citizens. The health care proposals now being considered by Washington could be 10, 20, 30 times that amount.
Washington this year has already spent $10 billion — the same as the Chinese health care reform — by giving $8,000 rebates to people who’d like to own their first home. And that program was just extended.
Plus, we spent $3 billion just to get some clunkers off the highways and to make the United Auto Workers happy.
In all, the Obama administration has enacted a total of $780 billion in stimulus programs.
Personally, I think it’s outrageous that some Americans can’t afford to see a doctor. Someone who is ill doesn’t want to know that his problem will be taken care of sometime in the future. When there’s pain today, people don’t want to know the cure is years away.
But the numbers just aren’t working in our favor for health care.
The Chinese aren’t going to lend us money to make Americans more healthy when their own citizens can’t get an aspirin.
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The cat’s out of the bag.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke revealed yesterday that the job situation in this country is worse than the 10.2 percent unemployment rate indicates.
He said people — and keep this to yourself, lest it get around — are underemployed.
That gets back to my many previous columns showing that when these underemployed are counted, the jobless rate is well over 17 percent.
And when you include people too discouraged to even look for a job, the rate goes over 20 percent.
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The 3.5 percent growth in the nation’s gross domes tic product during the third quarter was probably too optimistic.
Remember, I explained back then that the figure was mostly based on guesstimates, and because the 3.5 percent rate is an annualized figure, the real growth for the quarter alone was only 0.875 percent.
Multiply that number by four quarters and that’s how you get the 3.5 percent annualized growth.
Well, some of the guesses that went into that GDP are now being replaced by real numbers and the signs are that while there was still growth in the third quarter, it wasn’t as large as once thought.
No one is willing to guess at how much the GDP will need to be lowered.
But the nation’s trade deficit in September, which was only estimated in the GDP, widened to $36.5 billion from August’s $30.8 billion. Since goods imported from overseas naturally don’t count toward our country’s growth, that’ll reduce GDP.
And yesterday the Commerce Department announced that October retail sales were up 1.4 percent from the previous month. But October isn’t part of the third quarter.
At the same time, September retail sales were revised down to a 2.3 percent drop — larger than the 1.5 percent drop previously reported.
In case you haven’t noticed the pattern, for a long time Washington has been putting out economic data that needs to be lowered at a later date.
I’m not necessarily saying this is suspicious; just convenient.
john.crudele@nypost.com