We spend more on medical care than any other developed country in the world - almost twice the average - but the U.S. lags behind many other wealthy nations on outcomes such as infant mortality and life expectancy. How did we get here?

Christy Ford Chapin, a historian at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and author of “Ensuring America's Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System,” explains how what she calls “the insurance company model” was invented.

And although reducing health care costs is a priority for voters, Jonathan Cohn, a senior national correspondent at HuffPost and author of the book “Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis - and the People Who Pay the Price,” says forces that have hindered reform efforts in the past will almost certainly present pitfalls again in the future.