The twelve countries with the highest quality of life do not include the United States. We come in at number 13, which means that we''re not doing badly as a whole. But we're not doing as well as we should be doing, assuming (as many conservatives insist without reference to any metric) that there is no greater country than the United States. We were beaten in the rankings by many "socialist" countries, such as Norway, Canada, Sweden and France. The U.N.'s measurement system is the Human Development Index, a complex objective formula, not a subjective determination. Some of the many dozens of factors that go into the HDI include the following:

• Adult illiteracy rate
• Asylum seekers by country of asylum
• Average annual change in consumer price index (%)
• Children underweight for age (% under age 5)
• Combined gross enrolment ratio in education (%)
• Earned income (estimated), ratio of female to male
• Female adult literacy rate (% aged 15 and above)
• Female estimated earned income (PPP US$)
• Female life expectancy at birth (years)
• GDI rank
• GDP per capita (PPP US$)
• Government expenditure on health as a percentage of total government expenditure
• Government expenditure on health per capita (PPP US$)
• Healthy life expectancy at birth (years)
• Human development index value
• Human poverty index (HPI-1) rank

Although the United States now spends $2.4 trillion a year on medical care — vastly more per capita than comparable countries — the nation ranks near the bottom on premature deaths caused by illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers and pneumonia