America's Health Care: Which Road to Reform? - Introduction

The statistics are chilling, and often sensational: the United States spends more on health care than any other nation (over 13% of GNP), but over thirty-seven million people go uninsured; its infant mortality rate is higher than any other industrialized country's; its citizens die sooner and get sick more often than counterparts in Europe and Japan. But the numbers, which have become so depressingly familiar, tell only part of the story.