One of the biggest facts on the ground here is that the US spends (more or less) 2X as much as any other rich western country, and is not statistically better on any quantitative metric for its extra expense. So one would presumably benefit immensely from understanding what the US is doing wrong compared to other rich western systems.

Is the difference that the US is not government controlled while others are? Arguing against that are these facts: 1) 50% of medical expenses in the US are made by the government (the number is 70% for Canada). 2) US health care insurance companies are highly regulated in the terms on which they can offer insurance, what they can require, what they can forbid and so on, 3) the US (even before obamacare) practically mandates health care through 3rd party paid insurance (through providing gigantic tax advantages for that form over any other form of health care paying.)

So the US's "private" system is pretty government influenced. And if you study countries with public health care, virtually all of them have a significant private component.

If the hypothesis was "the british health care system is at least twice as efficient at providing measurable benefits per pound spent than is the US system," I don't see how anybody rational could argue against that. And I would say you could put essentially any european country in place of britain and get the same result.

So have I argued for or against the original proposition? To decide this, I have to decide: "Is a health care system which provides more than twice the bang for the buck necessarily "superior" to one which doesn't?" Well ceteris paribus it must be, but of course ceteris is not paribus between ANY two countries' health care systems. But you know what? I'll let someone else try to sell you on how the non-health benefits of the US system over the British actually are more than justified by the factor of 2 higher expense of the US system, because I do not agree with that and this post is already too long.

As political gooey statements go: "Government controlled healthcare is generally superior to private systems. "