The other day I was browsing through an issue of Time magazine from thirty years ago. It took me back to a year when “cutting-edge” products such as electric typewriters and telephone answering machines were “sure-fire, can’t-miss” gifts for Christmas.

At the back of the magazine I found a sobering essay titled “Our Health-Care Disgrace” (Barbara Ehrenreich, December 10, 1990). It was a snapshot of the state of health care in the United States, which, as the title suggests, was in grim shape in 1990. The nation spent 600 billion dollars on health care that year—bad news then.

Worse news today, the annual cost is $3.6 trillion. Yet despite their spending more on health care than any other country, Americans’ life expectancy today ranks 33rd out of 36 countries in the world.