There have been remarkable improvements in life expectancy over
the past 100 years. The reasons are many: sanitary drinking
water, pasteurized milk, safe sewage disposal, work safety,
higher standards of living, better education, and cures or
immunizations for many communicable diseases such as smallpox
and diphtheria. Readers may wonder why universal health care is
not on this list. It would be on a longer list, but research
indicates that a country’s health-care system is not as
important as any of the top seven reasons – in fact, it’s been
estimated that they are responsible for at least three-quarters
of the increases in life expectancy in developed countries over
the past 100 years. How much a society spends on health care has
not been found to be directly related to any health outcome
tested. For example, at 17 per cent of GDP, the United States
spends more (by far) on health care than any other country. And
yet, its life expectancy and infant mortality rates (two common
measures of population health) a