NHS

I think that universal health care is a great system, but just like anything, there are pros and cons...
My cousin and her husband have lived in London for about 10 years now and because they both have heart conditions, they have had much experience with National Health Service. When asked about it, she assured me that it was definitely not free. It maybe free for the unemployed or for all the tourists who may use NHS, but for others, it comes out of tax dollars. She expresses that socialized medicine is a great system, but it is simply overused in Britain and there are more people than it was designed to support. Appointments are difficult to come by, sometimes two weeks to see a doctor. And they are limited to 10 minutes, which is unrealistic for a medically uneducated public. In addition, she says that preventative care is almost non-existent even for common screening such as diabetes, blood cholesterol, and heart disease. You only get tested if you complain of something or indicate pain. And test results arrive through "snail mail" (no phone calls) and only if something abnormal shows up. Furthermore, the wait time for an angioplasty (common heart disease procedure) was up to 18 mos., where in CA it is diagnosed and fixed in the same day.

Along with NHS they also use private health care, where they pay 100GBP for an appointment. They use NHS if they don't need immediate attention, but go private if there's anything serious or potentially life threatening- "just because we are under the probably misguided impression that we will get better care if we are writing a check for it"

Since medical care is so expensive in the US, my cousins probably wont be able to afford it if they ever decide to move back, especially since they both have pre-existing heart conditions. Their assessment of NHS is that it will save your life if you're in need of emergency treatment. Which is something you'd expect an overburdened system to do, take the critical cases first. Of course it is a lot easier to list off what you don't like about the system, than it is to list the good. And I'm sure that cons to the US health care system would be a lot longer.