Studies since the 1980s have shown that despite spending enormous sums on health care, Americans are less healthy than their counterparts in other developed countries. In the most recent studies comparing the United States to 17 other wealthy industrialized nations including France, Japan, Canada and Britain, Americans had a shorter life expectancy, higher rates of disease, the highest rates of infant mortality and the lowest chance over all of surviving to middle age. These dismal findings have so befuddled health care experts, policymakers and politicians that they have come to be known simply as "the American health care paradox," or among the more candid, "the U.S. healthcare disadvantage."
