(CNN) — Despite spending more per person on health care than any other country, Americans are getting sicker and dying younger than our international peers — a problem persisting across all ages and both genders, according to a new report.

In 2011, the National Research Council found life expectancy in the United States was increasing at a slower rate than in other high-income democracies. Shortly after, the NRC and Institute Of Medicine convened a panel of experts to investigate why.

The panel was given 18 months to review recent health studies from 16 “peer countries”: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The panel released its report, titled “U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health,” on Wednesday.

(CNN) — What would happen if the entire population of adults in the U.S. reduced the amount of time they spent sitting or watching television?

Researchers, whose work is published in the British Medical Journal Open, say Americans may live longer. They estimate a gain of two years to life expectancy for reducing sitting to less than three hours a day, or an additional 1.38 years if everybody limited the time they spent plopped in front of the television to two hours.