I didn't say you were impolite because you disputed the facts. But because you were giving very vague definitions of what you were exactly looking for, and instead just turned down people who offered numerical evidence. Had you been more clear what exactly you were after, I'd wouldn't have had a problem (disputing the relevance of facts I think it's alright).
I agree health care is a badly defined word. And if you want to restrict yourself to services offered by medical professionals then I am fine.
Then I can argue with you that yeah, the USA is not so bad on the actual services provided. Although given the quality of the service changes with how much you can pay, we should really look at the average health care offered (hence those who can't pay and are not insured would count as horrible service). Also having universal health care helps simply because people can take much more advantage without worrying if it's worth the money. For example screening for diseases or cancer. And where I live now (UK) doctors will also check your weight, discuss how you can improve your diet and so on. Not sure then if these would count in your definition or not.
I think anyway that the guy you replied to meant a broader concept of health care. When the government subsidises screening or healthy food at schools then I would have counted those under health care.
Incidentally I guess that's why the WHO used those other data that you disliked. Financial inequality matters because richer people can afford better health care.
Financial inequality measures inequality in spending, not affordability.
The way they calculate it is to take sum |marginal_spending[i] - avg_marginal_spending|^a (I think a is 3, but I'd have to double check, I do recall that a > 1). So if 50% of people pay $1000 out of pocket for health care and 50% pay $0, you are penalized for being unequal. If everyone pays $2000 in taxes, the inequality penalty is zero. That's nothing but a penalty for non-socialized medicine and for copayments.
It's such a screwed up measure that increasing health or responsiveness for some of the population (or lowering costs for some, but not all) can reduce your score (if the magnitude is large enough)!
If you want to measure the baseline level of healthcare in a country (e.g., the bottom fifth percentile, or something), go ahead and do it. The WHO didn't do that. They ranked nations in order of how closely their health care systems resembled what some WHO bureaucrats thought an ideal health care system would look like.
I agree health care is a badly defined word. And if you want to restrict yourself to services offered by medical professionals then I am fine.
Then I can argue with you that yeah, the USA is not so bad on the actual services provided. Although given the quality of the service changes with how much you can pay, we should really look at the average health care offered (hence those who can't pay and are not insured would count as horrible service). Also having universal health care helps simply because people can take much more advantage without worrying if it's worth the money. For example screening for diseases or cancer. And where I live now (UK) doctors will also check your weight, discuss how you can improve your diet and so on. Not sure then if these would count in your definition or not.
I think anyway that the guy you replied to meant a broader concept of health care. When the government subsidises screening or healthy food at schools then I would have counted those under health care.
Incidentally I guess that's why the WHO used those other data that you disliked. Financial inequality matters because richer people can afford better health care.