"I’d sooner let a Tesco butcher fix my toe than ask the NHS"

Those in the USA who advocate European-style national socialist health insurance are invariably deaf to the many problems those countries face with their health care. Here is one British woman's experience:

For three weeks I’ve been limping around on a broken toe. The horse stamped on it and I’m in agony, but I’m not going to get it seen to because I do not want to go anywhere near my local hospital. I’m sorry, I know I will get complaints from doctors and nurses about how hard they work. I know the NHS is a sacred institution that must not be criticised. But I have been to St George’s Hospital in Tooting in London, and my nearest alternative, King’s College in Denmark Hill, and hell and high water wouldn’t drag me back to either.

I consider a little toe the size of a big toe far preferable to the horrors that might await me at either of those emporiums of state-sponsored, one-size-fits-all, “sit down and do as you’re told” totalitarianism.

The last time I went to St George’s, they made me fill in a questionnaire about my drinking habits before they would even look at my injury, which was a hole through the middle of my hand where I had got it stuck in my horse’s mouth. I told them I had been teetotal for most of my adult life, but that didn’t put them off. They mercilessly insisted I tick about 30 boxes with a “no” or “never”, while gripping and writing with one hand, before I qualified for anything approaching care.

And all the while, I could see people being admitted for emergency dental work. This is not my NHS, I thought. It’s someone else’s. I just pay for it. It quite likes my tax money but is not the least bit concerned about me. If it does care, it cares only in so much as I am fodder for its next risk assessment.

And we will have the same here, if the advoocates of socialized medicine for the USA get their way.