In a top-level comment, the HN participant who kindly submitted the L.A. Times article that opens the thread here notes with regret that the New York Times report
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/health/americans-under-50-...
on the same report provides more detail. The lede paragraph shows the importance of cultural and lifestyle factors rather than health-care-as-such in the mortality and morbidity outcomes:
"Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States."
Drug addiction in particular is a severe problem in the United States to a degree not seen in (for example) east Asia. The stark historical memory of the Opium Wars imposing Western drug-pushing on east Asian populations makes many countries on the other side of the Pacific Rim very wary of letting young people start drug use. Illicit drugs were all but unknown in the childhood experience of my wife under Taiwan's former military dictatorship. Growing up free of harmful psychoactive substances allows young people clear heads to learn a lot (including learning other languages for international understanding) and to grow up to promote social improvements, such as the steady democratization and upgrades in provision of health care in Taiwan during my adult life.
So let's be clear what the report tells us: health outcomes in the United States often fare poorly compared to the health outcomes in other countries approximately as rich. But the challenges to health in the United States sometimes differ in ways that reflect long-standing differences in United States culture that still need to be nudged in healthier directions.
AFTER EDIT: There has been some hand-waving (without specific deep links) about OECD health statistics in this thread. In fact, the United States does not fare as badly in comparison to other OECD countries
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2011-en/12/01/01...
as some of the statements in this thread have suggested. The decline in all-cause mortality at all age ranges during my lifetime in the United States
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...
has been steady, so people in general in the United States are living longer, healthier lives than ever before in history.