Dykman also considered fashioning a spread on healthcare, on which the US spent more per capita than any other industrialized nation in the world, including those with universal medical care. ^[17] Dykman wondered not only why this was the case, but why many Americans did not realize it. Most citizens believed, he says, that “we have the best healthcare system in the world. It’s not really true.” He recalls thinking:

We get worse results with our allegedly greatest medical system in the world. We have a higher infant mortality rate, we have much higher rates of disease, we have lower life expectancies than almost all of Western Europe and Asia… These are just facts you can present, and I don’t have to write an article saying "We must have socialized medicine."

Dykman thought about two ways to depict what he viewed as the dire state of healthcare in the US:

1. Comparative Statistics . He could illustrate how the US compared to other countries according to several measures of wellbeing. The US infant mortality rate , for example, was among the worst in the industrialized world. ^[18] The US also had significantly higher rates of reates of mortality from heart disease than most of Western Europe and Asia. ^[19]

2. Preventive Care . Dykman also found it alarming that the US healthcare system devoted proportionately so few resources to preventive healthcare. A recent study had found that Americans incurred an “overwhelming preponderance” of their health care costs in the last years of their lives. ^[20] Dykman viewed this as clear evidence that preventive care was comparatively neglected.