Health Care Scare Tactics

In "Collapsing empire watch", Glenn Greenwald pointed to an alarming statistic:

As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

Just to underscore the rapidity of the decline, as recently as 1999, the U.S. was ranked by the World Health Organization as 24th in life expectancy.  It's now 49th. 

But, there is a big mistake in this ranking.  If you trace Glenn Greenwald's URLs, the 1999 figures come from here; the 2010 findings come from a paper, which when you trace the citation, comes from the CIA worldbook, here.

Sure enough, on first glance, the US has dropped from 24th to 49th place in just a decade.

First looks can be deceptive.  Ask yourself the question which countries overtook the US during this decade, and where did they rank a decade ago?

Then you find that the following countries/entities are in the 2010 list and do not figure **anywhere** on the 1999 list:

1. Macau
2. Hong Kong
3. Anguilla
4. Cayman Islands
5. Bermuda
6. Liechtenstein
7. Guernsey
8. Jersey
9. Faroe Islands
10. Saint Pierre and Miguelon
11. Virgin Islands
12. Isle of Man
13. European Union
14. Gibraltar
15. Puerto Rico
16. Wallis and Futuna.
17. Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha

When you remove these countries, which did not figure on the 1999 list, from the 2010 list, then the US goes to 28th place in 2010 from 24th place in 1999.  The countries that were behind the US in the 1999 list and overtook the US by 2010 are (having removed the  entities above from the 2010 list)
1. Singapore (#30 in 1999, #3 in 2010)
2. New Zealand (#31 in 1999, #12 in 2010)
3. Jordan (#102 in 1999, #17 in 2010)
4. South Korea (#51 in 1999, #27 in 2010)

It may be worth noting that e.g., Spain fell from #5 to #15; the UK from #14 to #25, so US's 4 place drop, while disappointing, is not terrifying.

PS: corrections:

Double checking my work, which I should have done before posting, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Bosnia Herzgovina are also ahead of the US now, so the US fell from 24th in 1999 to 32nd in 2010.

Ireland fell from 27th to 30th, Denmark fell from 28th to 29th, Portugal from 29th to 31st, answering the question I had started out with - namely whether drug legalization had improved Portugal's standings (too small an effect to tell is my conclusion).

Bosnia rose from 56th to 28th.

PPS:
The 1997 list:

1. Japan
2. Australia
3. France
4. Sweden
5. Spain
6. Italy
7. Greece
8. Switzerland
9. Monaco
10. Andorra
11. San Marino
12. Canada
13. Netherlands
14. UK
15. Norway
16. Belgium
17. Austria
18. Luxembourg
19. Iceland
20. Finland
21. Malta
22. Germany
23. Israel
24. United States
25. Cyprus
26. Dominica
27. Ireland
28. Denmark
29. Portugal
30. Singapore
31. New Zealand

The 2010 list (minus the extra countries)

1. Andorra
2. Japan
3. Singapore
4. Australia
5. Canada
6. France
7. Sweden
8. Switzerland
9. San Marino
10. Israel
11. Iceland
12. New Zealand
13. Italy
14. Monaco
15. Spain
16. Norway
17. Jordan
18. Greece
19. Austria
20. Malta
21. Netherlands
22. Luxembourg
23. Germany
24. Belgium
25. UK
26. Finland
27. Korea, South
28. Bosnia and Herzgovina
29. Denmark
30. Ireland
31. Portugal
32. United States