Jake from State Farm's blog: "War On Drugs"

As noted previously, comparing different countries’ health care systems is tough because of the many variables involved, such as the fact that the U.S. has both the highest rate of overweight and obesity and the lowest smoking rate of the eight industrialized countries we’ve been looking at. And let’s not even get into matters like diet: how to compare Japanese who live on rice, fish, and vegetables to the wine-and-cheese-loving French to the fast-food-eating Americans?

Enter the concept of "amenable mortality." Invented years ago in the United States and used worldwide by researchers ever since, it’s basically a body count of people who die for want of "timely and effective health care." A higher rate is bad, because it means the country’s health care system is falling down on its one and only job, which is to keep people healthy and do the best job possible of treating them if they get sick.