Yves here. We’re taking the unusual step of featuring two syndicated posts in one here because they help illuminate a large and growing problem. The US has been falling behind on a relative basis on important measures of population-level health, from height to life expectancy to food security. Diet, exercise, enough control over one’s life so as to have only manageable stress, clean water and air, and adequate housing are all important to health. However, so to is health care (as opposed to “access to health care”). International comparisons of the performance of the US health system repeatedly highlight its outsized cost levels versus its poor performance on many key measures.…