Okay, so we don’t have a lot of doctors. Maybe our doctors here are super-efficient and take care of more patients than doctors in those other countries. Or maybe not…

Well, then, what about hospitals? You know, the places that people in other countries supposedly can’t get into, because of rationing and all.

Although when you look at hospital discharges—how many people actually are hospitalized—we do seem to be getting pretty good mileage from our meager resources. On the other hand, the British, whose health care system really is socialized medicine, go to the hospital almost exactly as often as we do. The French practically live there, it seems.

Surely there’s some type of medical care that we have more of than most other countries do! Indeed there is.

We have the second most MRI machines.

The second-highest rate of coronary bypass surgery (sorry, OECD doesn’t have heart surgery figures for Japan).

And the second-highest rate of angioplasties.

To recap, despite our highest-in-the-world health care spending, we are at or close to the bottom of the list in terms of some doctors and hospitals, while helping ourselves to much higher than average quantities of expensive, high-tech treatments and equipment.

This week, we’ll find out whether our meager use of doctors and hospitals and relatively lavish use of high-tech has bought us better health and longer lives. Stay tuned.

—Nancy Metcalf, Senior Program Editor