Featured Image: https://www.pexels.com/photo/light-light-bulb-bulb-heat-40889/ Also worth noting, because the US doesn’t have a single payer system (state run healthcare) that can negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma, Americans pay far more than other countries for pharmaceuticals. In effect, Americans are subsidizing the rest of the world’s healthcare. Even drug companies located abroad (in Europe and Asia) rely on making back their initial R&D costs in the American market. Note: to some extent Dr. Gatling was right. Following the World Wars, our weaponry has gotten so advanced that for the last 70 years countries have been rather disinclined to fight one another. In fact, at the moment we live in the most peaceful period of human history (in spite of what you hear in the news, which is primarily the result of 24 hour news cycles and the internet…the world used to be a lot, lot, lot worse than it is today). Note: some southern states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas are still lagging significantly behind the rest of the country in terms of life expectancy, literacy, GDP, health, etc. primarily due to the fact that nearly half their population was disenfranchised for nearly 2 centuries. Photos: 24. Nina Aldin Thune via wikimedia commons, 16. flyingorcas via flickr, 15. Dean (leu) via flickr, 14. configmanager via flickr, 13. Clinton: Gage Skidmore via flickr; Trump: iphonedigital via flickr, 12. Gunner Ries (Amphibol) via wikimedia commons, 10. bookmama via flickr, 9. Alexandre Dulaunoy via flickr, 8. Starkus01 via wikimedia commons, 5. Matthew Trump 2004 via wikimedia commons, 4. http://nyphotographic.com/ via jphotostyle.com, 3. pictorialevidence via wikimedia commons, 1. Fibonacci Blue via flickr