If one big thing you want out of life is to live a long time in good health, the U.S. is not doing a good job, says a major report from the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, entitled "Shorter Lives, Poorer Health."
There's no explaining it away. A panel of physicians and researchers from around the country found a health disadvantage at all ages -- from birth to 75 -- when compared against people in 16 other "high income" countries.
The breadth and scale of this report is something: 405 pages of analysis across diseases, ages and incomes groups.
Even well-off Americans, "those who have health insurance, college educations, higher incomes and healthy behaviors," according to the press release, seem to be in worse health than their counterparts in the other well-off countries.
Dr. Steven Woolf, chair of the panel that wrote the report, said they were "struck by the gravity" of what they learned. "Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health. What concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind."