None of this seems to engage much with the original commenter's point: America has uniquely bad public health problems which worsen both its direct outcomes (e.g. mortality) and the outcomes of the health care system, by putting more burden on that system. So it's not that easy to distinguish America's public health issues from its health care system issues.
Maybe deeper analysis is needed, not just the pet theories Horgan trots out on this and the other topics. He seems to be swinging about as wildly as those he's criticizing.
How would you characterize the quality of a health care system than? Which measures should a poor performing health care system fail to deserve being called worse than others?
It seems to me as you are setting the conditions for measuring the quality of a health care systems as to make it impossible to value the quality of the American one compared to other nations.
It sounds like you think I am trying to win, or not lose, a debate by making it hard for you to succeed in your argument. I am not. I am not in the slightest personally invested in the question of whether the US health care system is better or worse than other countries'. I just don't think these statistics add up to a meaningful analysis of this complex problem, or a meaningful attribution to the health care system versus other causes. The world doesn't owe us a tidy statistic on which we can lay out all the nations and say whose health care system is good and whose is bad.
I would refer you to the original commenter's point, supported by my subsequent points. Public health issues seem to matter more than the health care system, and the US has uniquely bad public health issues, most of which the health care system by itself can't do much about. I don't think you've effectively disputed that point. "It's unfair that there's not a metric you'll accept showing how bad the US health care system is and how important that is" is just relying on the exact premise we're disputing.
Maybe deeper analysis is needed, not just the pet theories Horgan trots out on this and the other topics. He seems to be swinging about as wildly as those he's criticizing.