Better Health Care for Less Money? It's Not Easy

"America spends more on health care than other rich nations, but has lower life expectancy." If I had a nickel for every time I have been informed this by an email, seen it in a headline, heard it in conversation, or watched it scroll across my social media feed, I would be able to personally fund a single-payer health-care system.

As with many political memes, its usefulness to policy wonks is inversely proportional to the weight that its casual proponents place on it. As stated, this meme is true enough: America does have higher health-care costs than anywhere else, and we do indeed have shorter life expectancies than some nations. But of course people are not introducing these facts as a fun bit of trivia, like “Babe Ruth used to wear a cabbage leaf under his baseball cap to keep cool.” What they are actually interested in communicating is the implication that America could switch to a single-payer health-care system and thereby enjoy longer life expectancies at lower cost. And that implication is considerably more dubious.