If you’ve been paying any attention to the fractious debate over American health policy, you’ve probably heard this phrase: “the sickest generation in American history.” The words can be found in the third sentence of a major report released in May by a presidential commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but the line itself essentially sums up the ethos of his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. America, and especially its children, is “the sickest country in the world,” as Kennedy himself told senators in a hearing earlier this month.

This idea — that we are sicker than we’ve ever been — underpins the radicalism of the MAHA agenda. If it’s true, then what choice do we have but to blow up the American health care system and remake it from top to bottom? Which is exactly what Kennedy aims to do.

Well, I’m here with some good news: It is not true. America is not, in fact, the sickest country in the world, and this generation — our kids included — is far from the sickest generation in American history. Once you gather the evidence, and once you realize the actual state of American health for much of the country’s history, it’s so not true that to ponder the question as it’s stated feels almost absurd. Decades of progress in everything from vaccines and drugs to cleaner air and water have made Americans far healthier and longer-lived than their ancestors.

Does this mean that Americans are as healthy as they could be, or that we aren’t seeing........

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