Another study of our health, Another indication that it's not as great as we think

Two Columbia University researchers released the results of their latest study on life expectancy in the U.S. They compared our country with Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom and found that our life expectancy is less than many of these other countries.

Interestingly, they do not think our problem is primarily the usual suspects - obesity, smoking, traffic fatalities, and homicide. Here's what one of the authors had to say:

"It was shocking to see the U.S. falling behind other countries even as costs soared ahead of them. But what really surprised us was that all of the usual suspects—smoking, obesity, traffic accidents, and homicides—are not the culprits. The U.S. doesn't stand out as doing any worse in these areas than any of the other countries we studied, leading us to believe that failings in the U.S. health care system, such as costly specialized and fragmented care, are likely playing a large role in this relatively poor performance on improvements in life expectancy."