CNN and Time today launch a series of Fareed Zakaria specials that will examine some of the most pressing issues of the 2012 election. The specials will accompany feature articles by Zakaria in Time magazine.

The first of the specials, 'Global Lessons: The GPS Road Map for Saving Health Car', debuts tonight on CNN Domestic at 8:00pm DST and will air on CNN International this weekend. Details from CNN below.

CNN Press Release: Fareed Zakaria Launches Quarterly Series on American Renewal on CNN and in TIME Magazine

CNN and TIME’s Fareed Zakaria will launch a quarterly series of television specials for CNN/U.S. and CNN International and feature articles for TIME that pursue solutions to the most pressing issues central to the 2012 election: health care, immigration, jobs, and energy, it was announced today. The first special, Global Lessons: The GPS Road Map for Saving Health Care, will debut on Sunday, March 18 at 8:00pm and 11:00pm ET & PT on CNN/U.S., and on CNN International on Saturday, March 24 at 9:00pm ET. The companion article for TIME will be in the edition that hits newsstands on Friday, March 17.

“We Americans need to recognize that there are many areas where we could learn a lot from what other countries are doing. America’s best companies routinely benchmark to global standards. What we’re trying to do in this series is just that – look around the world and ask, ‘what can we learn?’ In the process, we also found areas where we could teach the rest of the world a thing or two.” Zakaria said.

The one-hour in-depth premieres as the nation arrives at the two-year anniversary of the historic passage of The Affordable Care Act in Congress – and days from when the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to review the federal legislation for its constitutionality. He will explore how other nations have addressed the challenges of costs and quality of care, as well as a successful community model within the U.S.

While health care costs in America totaled 17.6 percent of GDP in 2009, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the high cost of health care seems uncorrelated to quality of care. Zakaria reports Americans no longer rank within the top 25 nations for healthy life expectancy or infant mortality.

Put plainly, New Jersey’s Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers founder and family medicine practitioner, Jeffrey Brenner, MD, says: “We’re spending a whole lot in our country for health care, and we’re not getting our money’s worth.”

For the special, Zakaria also interviews David Goldhill, the president and CEO of the Game Show Network, who penned an editorial for The Atlantic magazine (“How American Health Care Killed My Father,” Sept. 2009); New Yorker magazine’s Atul Gawande, MD; William Hsiao, PhD, an economics professor at Harvard who helped design Taiwan’s health care system; and The Washington Post’s T.R. Reid, author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care (2010) for insights from his tour of health systems around the world.

Digital resources with more information on health care models in the U.S. and abroad will be explored in-depth at www.cnn.com/gps. The site will also include excerpts from the program, as well as articles and multimedia content for the upcoming specials on immigration, jobs, and energy.

Dan Logan and Maite Amorebieta produced Global Lessons: The GPS Road Map for Saving Health Care. Tom Goldstone is the executive producer for the special series and of the FAREED ZAKARIA GPS unit.

This first edition of Global Lessons will replay on Saturday, March 24 at 8:00pm and 11:00pm ET and PT on CNN/U.S. Future Global Lessons programs will focus on immigration, jobs, and energy. Companion articles to the specials on these topics authored by Fareed Zakaria will be featured in TIME throughout 2012.