Washington Post: Socialized Medicine is Struggling in the UK: A campaign to keep people away from hospitals during the holidays is underway, which includes begging the public to seek out other forms of treatment for “less serious” injuries and ailments — HotAir

>Both funded and run by the taxpayer, the NHS relies on rationing treatment to stay afloat.

This is the essence of socialized medicine. There has to be a way to ration care… there has to be a backstop or else Americans will consume virtually unlimited medical care and want ever increasingly expensive treatments.

Right now the only major backstop to that is insurance companies… who people despise. When the government is the one running everything, it will only get worse.