The overall performance of the United States health care system was ranked 37th by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000, but the same report assessed Americans' overall health at 72nd among 191 member nations included in the study.

The health care system in the U.S. has a vast number of players — there are hundreds, if not thousands, of insurance companies in the U.S........... "The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It" By Paul Krugman, Robin Wells, New York Review of Books, March 23, 2006

This system has considerable administrative overhead, far greater than in nationalized, single-payer systems, such as Canada's. An oft-cited study by Harvard Medical School and the Canadian Institute for Health Information determined that some 31 percent of U.S. health care dollars, or more than $1,000 per person per year, went to health care administrative costs, nearly double the administrative overhead in Canada, on a percentage basis..........^ Costs of Health Administration in the U.S. and Canada Woolhandler, et al, NEJM 349(8) Sept. 21, 2003