ranked the U.S. health care system as the most expensive per capita among eleven Western countries, about two times higher than all the other surveyed countries. At the same time, the United States came in last in overall performance. This data reflects the hard fact that despite the ever-increasing amount of resources spent on dealing with our nation’s health problems, we have made little progress in treating chronic pain conditions, brain-gut disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or mental illnesses such as clinical depression, anxiety, or neurodegenerative disorders.
