Japan’s health-insurance system covers everybody, including illegal aliens. It pays for physical, mental, dental, and long-term care.

Japanese are the world’s most prodigious consumers of medical care; they see the doctor about 15 times per year, three times the U.S. norm. They get twice as many prescriptions per capita and three times as many MRI scans. The average hospital stay is 20 nights—four times the U.S. average.

Cost: And yet Japan produces all that high-quality care at bargain-basement prices. The aging nation spends about $3,500 per person on health care each year; America burns through $7,400 per person and still leaves millions without coverage.

Canadians live three years longer and are healthier than Americans, and the lack of universal health care in the United States may be a factor, researchers say.