Unless you have a better source, that claim has been debunked. It still persists though because it's incredibly catchy:

https://archive.is/WGoir

> The average American can’t afford a 400 dollar expense

The average American has $432,000 in net assets, is the second richest in the world (behind Switzerland), and can trivially afford such an expense.

Did you mean that around 12-16% of the population can't afford an immediate out of pocket $400 expense? Because that's the real figure according to the Federal Reserve study that's constantly misquoted.

The median American has a higher net worth than either Germany or Sweden, and among the highest disposable income of any nation.

Now that’s just being petty with stats. You knew I was talking about the majority of Americans not the richest. Sure if you take the arithmetic average of assets it will come out very high. But that’s because the millionaires and billionaires skew the numbers.

Exactly. A bond trader steps into a subway car and the other people are some college students, a hobo, and some essential workers. The average wealth doubles.

"Poorer" countries than the US like Portugal, France, Japan, UK have far better health outcomes including lower infant mortality, lower chronic diseases, better life expectancy than the US.

The US is the only "developed" country where 10 are uninsured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_health_in...

Another N% are under insured, or hampered by high deductibles, copays, limits etc.

Whats the point of having a "high median net worth" if the basic needs of the people aren't met?

As far as infant mortality and life expectancy, the picture is a lot more complicated than you portray.

The US is including in their life expectancy data cases of stillbirths or nonviable fetuses at birth, which are not recorded in EU numbers, for example.

" measurement problems arise in international comparisons because the data are not consistently gathered or reported. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has a formal definition of what should be included in the infant mortality statistics, anecdotal evidence suggests that countries do not use consistent practices in measuring these data (Haub and Yanagishita, 1991; Hartford, 1992). "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193257/

https://www.nber.org/bah/2015no1/why-infant-mortality-higher...

Not even remotely accurate:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...

The US is 22nd by median net wealth.