alt Hacker NewsOf course it is, to be healthy you need to be born Mississippi is double the OCED average for infant mortality. Then you can track obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, etc. throughout life. The only area where all this supposed American exceptional wealth confers an advantage in healthcare is post op outcomes where higher penetration of CT / MRI scans can make a measurable difference. Even then the difference is not large. You don't get a DECADE of life expectancy difference without an objective difference in health.
> OCED average for infant mortality
This is no good because different companies use different criteria for infant mortality. For example, the US leads the world in trying to save premies, and does well at it. But the failures are counted as infant mortality. Other countries categorize premie death as a miscarriage.
Some societies do not count a baby as an infant until it has survived its first year.
> life expectancy difference
Criminality, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and obesity strongly affect life expectancy. It's an error to blame it all on the health care system.