The Best Healthcare in the World!

I had a discussion on Facebook a few months ago with a guy I went to high school with who is a conservative. His claim, a claim I have heard from many conservatives, is that the United States has the best healthcare in the world. I tried to point out some statistics about how the U.S. actually ranks fairly low in terms of life expectancy and other factors, although we certainly outspend everyone else by a large margin. He countered with an anecdote about a Canadian who had come to the U.S. for treatment. As is usually the case, the discussion drifted off to no real conclusion since neither party was going to be convinced. Then today an Ezra Klein post about the bipartisan healthcare summit today helped to clarify the subject for me:

There's a difference between the statements "America has the best health-care system in the world" and "With enough money, you can purchase the best health care in the world in America."

This really summed up the difference in how we were looking at the healthcare system and how well it works.
He was looking at a system that both he and I participate in, and how well it works for us.  I was looking at a system that excludes many people from participation, and how that doesn't work well for our country as a whole.  There are a lot of side-affects from having so many people uninsured in this country, and that, in large part, is what leads to the the lousy results we get in terms of system-wide statistics like life expectancy.

Ezra also makes a realy powerful point about how we should look at the system as a whole:

People should ask themselves a very simple question: Do they think they are likelier to lose their job and fall into the health-care situation of the uninsured or become an influential politician and enjoy the health-care options available to the most powerful people in the world?

He's refering to a specific anecdote about a Canadian Premier coming to the U.S. for treatment, but I think the principle makes sense.  Are you more likely to recieve the best healthcare in the world, or to lose your healthcare entirely in our current system?  Do you still feel the same way now, during the Great Recession, as you did a few years ago when unemployment was below 5%?  Should the relative condition of the economy have so much control over your access to healthcare?