I don't have an objective mechanism of evaluating whether or not a system actually promotes health. The issue is exemplified in comparing Japan's health system to the US; do you compare averages of everybody, or just the averages of, say, Japanese-descended people living in the US?
Somebody whose lineage traces back to Japan does as well in the US as in Japan, is the issue. Comparing the two health systems of the basis of population health ignores that the healthcare system may represent only a minority contribution to the health of the population. It's not that I don't think it's an important criteria, it's that I don't believe I have any mechanism of reliably measuring it; to the extent that it can be measured, I judge it being measured in the "Innovation" column, which produces in successes a better healthcare system. (That is, I believe the metric of success in promoting health is better measured at the rate of change in the system's ability to promote health.)
I do agree that taxation is orthogonal to healthcare, which is why I'd prefer a national healthcare system with private options to the healthcare bill we got, which directly violated my #1 criteria.
In line with the results of the poll here, a thread for discussing politics. Incidentally, folks, I think downvoting the option you disagree with in a poll is generally considered poor form.
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
4.) In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.
If anybody thinks the rules should be dropped here, now that we're no longer conducting a test - I already dropped the upvoting/downvoting limits I tried, unsuccessfully, to put in - let me know. The first rule is the only one I think is strictly necessary.
Debiasing attempt: If you haven't yet read Politics is the Mindkiller, you should.