Some of us are in denial, so here's a hard fact: We Americans spend far more money on health care than any other developed nation, but we're no healthier.

We're even less healthy overall.

The chart below shows the bad news. The horizontal axis is years of life expectancy. The vertical axis is per capita healthcare spending. Ideally, you want to be in the lower right quadrant. That means your population has a relatively high life expectancy and relatively low healthcare spending.

France, Japan, Spain, Chile, and a bunch of others are clustered in that area. Their money buys more health than ours does.