The United States health care system has significant strengths and significant weaknesses. It has a large and well-trained healthcare workforce, a wide range of high-quality medical professionals as well as secondary and tertiary facilities, a strong health sector research program and, for selected services, among the best medical outcomes in the world. But it also suffers from incomplete coverage of its population, levels of health expenditure per person that far exceed all other countries, poor measures of many objective and subjective measures of quality and outcomes, unequal distribution of resources and outcomes across the country and among different population groups. It is difficult to determine the extent to which the deficiencies are related to the health care system, although at least some of the problems appear to be due to poor access to care. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, the United States is facing a period of enormous potential change. Improving coverage is a central goal, envisioned through subsidies for the uninsured to purchase private insurance, expanded Medicaid eligibility (in some states), and greater protections for the insured. Furthermore, primary health care and public health receive more funding, and quality and expenditure are addressed by a number of measures. Whether the ACA will actually be effective in addressing the above challenges can only be determined with time. The American health care system is often called an expensive and inefficient system. There are many stakeholders and service providers, high costs and poorer population health outcomes than those achieved in other industrialized countries such as Britain, Germany and Canada. The health care system is widespread with high levels of coverage for various insurance plans through employment-based insurance along with publicly funded and managed health insurance. Solving health care's most challenging financing, delivery, and policy issues depends as much on finding common ground as it does on the medical, social, behavioral, and organizational sciences.