of preterm births and low birth weight, and especially the very poor outcomes among African-Americans. American's short life expectancy, they say, comes from high rates of obesity, as well as homicides and accidents. But the U.S. ' high rate of prematurity and low birth weight is, largely, a result of poor care -- inadequately treated infections and chronic illnesses among pregnant women, and the shockingly frequent failure to deliver adequate prenatal care. 16% of pregnant women in the U.S. receive no care at all in the first trimester of pregnancy, far higher than in Canada. While the O'Neill's dwell on the high obesity rates in the U.S. as an important non-medical cause of mortality differences, they ignore Canada's significantly higher smoking rate -- a graver threat to health than obesity. Moreover, they cite data from the OECD that exaggerates the obesity differences, ignoring the more reliable JCUSH data that they use for most of their other comparisons (presumably because the JCUSH found more modest differences in obesity rates). They emphasize that accidents and homicides account for a large fraction of the U.S. /Canada mortality difference among young adults, age 20-24. But deaths are rare in this age group, and accident/homicides account for virtually none of the difference in older age groups, where almost all of the deaths occur. In fact, differences in heart disease cause most of the Canadian advantage -- a difference that almost certainly reflects, at least in part, better access to care in Canada. The O'Neills also