If you can post any reasonable rebuttal of any point, I would like to hear it.
Back to the life expectancy ratings as being any kind of evidence of a good health care system, it is one indicator, but as the following points explain, it is only one important one of several. As I have pointed out, you need to look behind the numbers to see what is driving them.
The following site points out the accident statistics are much higher, about double those in Europe.
http://www.driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-multicountry-percapita-2004.htm
So add accident statistics to homicide rates, obesity rates, and smoking, and you realize that life expectancy numbers are highly dependant on lifestyle factors, apart from health care. I have been criticized here for saying the U.S. health care system is the best or near the best in the world. The following quote from the following article asserts that very thing, and it is backed up by a discussion of the lifestyle factors discussed here.
"When you adjust for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/08/why_the_us_ranks_low_on_whos_h.html
P. S. By the way, being fat and poor does not necessarily imply cause and effect. They could be and I think quite possibly are both effects of another cause. Has that ever occurred to anyone else here?