Comparative health systems · 160 countries
Four rankings built from live World Bank, WHO and OECD data: the healthiest countries, the most efficient health systems, the most publicly owned ones — and the position of the United States on each. It is not in the top ten of any of them.
America spends 2.5× what Japan spends, and Japan has the best health outcomes on earth.
| Metric | US rank | US value | Best performer |
|---|
Japan, Norway, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and five more. A percentile composite of life expectancy, healthy life expectancy, HALE at 60, infant and maternal mortality — plus the trap hidden in "years lived with chronic illness."
Outcomes per dollar across advanced nations, with Cuba and Kerala as the two outliers that get rich-world results on poor-world budgets — and the reasons to handle both carefully.
Public ownership of hospitals, beds, long-term care and drug manufacturing — and whether owning the delivery apparatus relates to outcomes, cost or efficiency.
Public share of health financing across 156 countries, what it actually buys, and why it is a different variable from owning the hospitals — the two correlate at only r = +0.25.
Sources, composite design, and three data-quality warnings that materially move the rankings — Gulf-state inflation, contested Cuban statistics, and small-country volatility.