In 2005 Americans paid out a record 16% of our gross domestic
product for health care a cool $2 trillion making us the
world's top spender on health care per capita. You might think
we'd be getting some bang for those bucks, but our leading
killer remains what it has been every year since 1900 ... heart
disease, which kills nearly 650,000 of us each year. The
reason we rank so poorly is that we don't provide a
basic-wellness infrastructure, says Dr. Mehmet Oz, director
of the cardiovascular institute at the Columbia University
Medical Center...
- America's
Health Checkup, Alice Park, Time Magazine December 1, 2008
