Here in the US, our Health Care system is becoming increasingly expensive and ineffective, with more and more people unable to afford even basic insurance. Insurance companies are deciding who and what they will treat, and even those of us with reasonable coverage are all a major hospital stay away from financial disaster. Emergency rooms are overloaded with the uninsured. And yet there are those, particularly of the Conservative bent, who keep repeating the old saw "we here in the US have the best health care system in the world...look where 'socialized medicine' is being used. Take England, for example..You can wait four hours in line in a doctor's office for basic treatment! You can wait months or years for necessary surgery! And the treatment, if you can get it, is far below American standards. And you have no control over who treats you!"
Now, we hear less about the Canadian System, but still not much positive. It occurs to me that here at Mudcat we have a generous number of Brits and Canadians who could give us first hand observations as to how well "socialized medicine" works for them.

So, how is it working? What are the problems, and how can it be improved? How about other countries like Germany, Russia, Australia?