United States tied with Thailand in fundamental measure of health

Americans like to think that we have the world’s best health care. Sometimes that’s true. But in one of the most fundamental measures of health — infant mortality, the percentage of babies who die before their first birthday — we come up short. By a lot. Roughly seven of every 1,000 babies born in the United States die before their first birthday. That puts America on a par with the rates in Serbia and Lithuania. In a ranking of countries’ infant mortality rates, with No. 1 being the best, the United States is tied with Thailand in 29th place. We rank slightly lower than Poland, Hungary, Croatia and South Korea. Our rate is more than twice as bad as the rates in Japan, Sweden, Cyprus and Italy, and three times worse than Iceland’s. There is