People who favor Socialized medicene in the United States use life expectancy as an indicator of how good a countries health care is. I saw an article in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram making this allegation this week. Data cited show that life expectancy in the US is 20th or 30th in the world. (The difference in average life is not great; maybe a year or two.)It is asserted that Cuba has better health care than the US because of lower infant mortality. It seems to me that life expectancy could be influenced by a lot of factors other than health care. Lifestyle factors such as diet and exercize could be more important. Genetic factors may also be involved, although the politically correct crowd doesn't like to admit that there are any genetic differences. But it seems that some diseases such as sugar diabetes are more prevalent in some races than others (though again, other factors may explain that). Then there is some question about the reliability of the data. I think that raw life expectancy data are a poor indicator of the quality of a country's health care system.