Special post for some of our doubting friends.

Here is the ranking of countries by life expectancy at birth, from the new United Nations Development Program Human Development Report. You won't actually find the countries listed in this order anywhere in the report, they're alphabetical or ordered by the net score on a complex "Human Development Index." But thanks to the powers of Excel, it's easy to generate this most interesting view of the world, from this table.

"The number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of age-specific mortality rates at the time of birth were to stay the same throughout the child’s life."

>1 Japan 82.2
>2 Hong Kong 81.8
>3 Iceland 80.9
>4 Switzerland 80.7
>5 Australia 80.5
>6 Sweden 80.3
>7 Canada 80.2
>8 Italy 80.2
>9 Israel 80
>10 Spain 79.7
>11 Norway 79.6
>12 France 79.6
>13 New Zealand 79.3
>14 Austria 79.2
>15 Belgium 79.1
>16 Germany 78.9
>17 Singapore 78.9
>18 Finland 78.7
>19 Cyprus 78.7
>20 Luxembourg 78.6
>21 Malta 78.6
>22 Netherlands 78.5
>23 United Kingdom 78.5
>24 Greece 78.3
>25 Costa Rica 78.3
>26 United Arab Emirates 78.3
>27 Chile 78.1
>28 Ireland 77.9
>29 Cuba 77.6
>30 United States 77.5

GDP per capita, 2004, measured by purchasing power parity (PPP)

U.S. -- $39,676
Cuba -- $5,700 (est.)

I will leave further comment to those who wish to explain why the United States has the highest quality health care in the world, and why this is the greatest country on earth.