As for our expenditures for health, it would seem natural to consider them as investments in our future—until one examines their uses and outcomes. In health outcomes the United States ranks below all other major democracies, by measures such as life expectancy, infant mortality, and maternal mortality. That’s because the U.S. has high health-related expenditures for purposes not leading to healthy outcomes, such as high insurance premiums charged by our for-profit health insurance companies, high administrative costs, high costs of prescription drugs, high costs of medical malpractice
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