P.S. to Thoughts on Healthcare

In addition to the below information, I think it is also likely that Americans would be more overall healthy without the continuous government interference in the market. One of the largest ongoing welfare programs is the Farm Subsidy program, where the government pays huge sums of money for people (and multi-million dollar international companies) to grow enormous quantities of inedible corn. This corn is either used as animal feed, leading to corn fed beef, which has a higher fat content than grass fed beef, and highly processed food pumped full of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both of these are cheaper than they would otherwise be due to their reliance on a subsidized crop. It's damn near impossible to not eat High Fructose Corn Syrup and it's prevalence coincides with a drop in price, and thus rise in consumption, of highly processed pseudo-food.

Without all of this, it's safe to assume that people would be healthier and require less health care overall.