The Washington Post this weekend ran an interesting but rather mixed-up report on the Japanese health care system and whether something like it could, or should, be adopted in America. The Japanese live longer than Americans, their health care system costs less, and they have full choice of doctors. What’s not to like?

Well, there’s this: “Statistics show that the Japanese are much less likely to have heart attacks than people in the United States, but that when they do, their chance of dying is twice as high.”

A lot more than just the quality of medical care goes into longevity. Violent crime and war, for example, tend to drive down the average life span, and the U.S. has more of both. Diet and demographics are also important, of course. An apples-to-apples comparison such as how patients in each country fare after heart surgery suggests that the Japanese medical system isn’t nearly as good as the lede of this WaPo article would like us to believe.