It's been a sore spot for the U.S. for years. Despite living in the richest country on earth with the most expensive health care system, Americans are less healthy and live shorter lives than people in a number of countries that spend far less on hospitals, doctors and medicine.

A comprehensive look at the U.S. health care system by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Peterson Center on Healthcare shows that while the U.S. bests "comparable countries" on a handful of important health care metrics, it lags behind its peers in far more ways.

Among the measures in which the U.S. is a leader in the pack, as of 2013:

  • Mortality rate for breast and colorectal cancers.

  • 30-day in-hospital mortality rate for acute myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke.

  • Hospital admission rate for uncontrolled diabetes.

  • Wait time for specialists.

The U.S. performs on par with other first-world nations when it comes to cervical cancer survival rates, in-hospital mortality rates for hemorrhagic strokes.

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