If we avoid work when we're sick so that we don't get other people sick, wouldn't that result in a healthier population? I guess I'm confused as to why it wouldn't result in that?
Life expectancy in the US is lower because we're all overweight. Infant mortality isn't a standardized metric, so it really shouldn't be used to compare health systems, even though people try to do so all of the time. A lot of infant mortality in the US is due to there being 1.5-2x as many births to mothers under the age of 20 (versus what one might see in Europe), which is really a societal problem, not a healthcare problem.