America’s health system is poised to rise to another divisive issue at the mid-term elections following publication of new global health data that ranks the US 62nd for overall life expectancy and 40th for healthy life expectancy, despite spending more than any other nation on healthcare at $13,473 per person.

The World Health Organization (WHO) placed American healthy life expectancy (HALE) at 66.2 to 67.3 years and overall life expectancy at 76.4 to 77.5 years in data published on Friday in its latest Global Health Estimates.

In a positive note, WHO reported that global life expectancy has bounced back to 73.3 years, which is just shy of the historical peak of 73.4 years before the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Global HALE — the number of years a person can expect to live in full health without severe disease or disability—has recovered to 62.8 years, just 0.4 years below its pre-pandemic high.

But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that simply increasing lifespan without securing physical and mental well-being only shuffles the cards in healthcare systems instead of improving them. “Now we must make sure people don’t just live longer, but live those extra years in good health,” he pointed out.

The flagrant gaps between American health performance and other rich countries could draw attacks against Trump for further widening the near complete decoupling of financial health spending from actual biological health outcomes. The WHO report could provide a numbers-driven indictment of America’s healthcare framework.

Using different measures from WHO, expert estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others placed US health care spending per person at $14,775 to $14,885, American HALE at 67.8 to 68.5 years and overall life expectancy at 79 years with 76.5 years for men and 81.4 years for women.

It turns out that health spending per person in the US was almost $5,000 more than in Switzerland, the next highest peer country. Other highly developed nations like France, Canada, and Britain spent $7,367, $7,301, $6,747 per person respectively, which is half of what the U.S. spends. The U.S. spent more tax dollars per citizen on healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid than Britain or Japan.

America’s low HALE ranking suggests that its massive health expenditure does not buy proportional health benefits. A core goal of modern medical systems is not just to keep sick bodies alive but to ensure that people stay healthy as close to the end of their lives as possible.

Top-performing nations in the WHO report seem to achieve this, e.g., a Singapore citizen enjoys a HALE of 73.6 years on average, meaning she faces just a short window of late-life decline. The American system favors high-cost, late-stage treatments over lower cost early prevention. It keeps chronically ill patients alive for decades but fails at keeping them healthy for much of their lives.

WHO measures health data a little differently because it applies a uniform tracking model across its 183 member states to allow for accurate international comparisons and smoothen currency conversions. It incentivizes health systems that maximize average national life expectancy and equitable treatment of all categories of people.

In contrast, the U.S. health system is a global leader for those with premium insurance or independent wealth because it focuses on medical innovation, rapid diagnostics and access to cutting-edge subspecialty care, such as advanced oncology or complex gene therapies.

In light of WHO ideals, the U.S. does not have a healthcare system designed for the collective population; it has a highly sophisticated, hyper-expensive medical marketplace stratified by income, social stratum and locality.

American figures are a little different from WHO because they are adjusted locally for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and real-time national healthcare consumption. They use metrics published by the advanced nations’ OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) and the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker. WHO uses those metrics as well but analyzes them differently to take account of all countries, rich, middle-income and poor.