Following up on we're number last . . .

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The U.S. not only has the lowest life expectancy among the wealthy countries, it also has lower life expectancy than many low and middle income countries. In fact life expectancy in Cuba is higher than life expectancy in the U.S. Here's a snapshot of part of the list. (I expect that given its recent catastrophic problems, Lebanon has slipped. The country with the longest life expectancy at birth is Japan. I didn't know either -- Mayotte is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, an overseas department of France.)

 

 

Cuba, despite being obviously a poor country and despite its governments many failings, has universal health care, operated by the government, which the WHO ranks 33d in the world. In any case the U.S. is obviously doing very poorly compared to some not so formidable competition. It's worth asking why this is.