More on the U.K., Life Expectancy, and Cancer

Michael's post below on the U.K.'s low cancer survival rate provides some perspective for a story in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago which was nearly giddy in pointing out how the U.S. has "fallen behind" much of the world in life expectancy due to obesity, a lack of socialized health care, and our slow adoption of various other paternalistic government programs aimed at limiting risk and influencing lifestyle.

On my personal blog, I put up a long post outlining a number of reasons why life expectancy is a poor measure of a country's overall health, and why the U.S.'s low ranking is probably misleading.