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I had a friend that was on travel to London about 10 years ago. He had serious back problems and needed back surgery. He was a Federal Employee and had good insurance. He was taken to a hospital and put in to a ward with 25 other people with only sheets as screens. He said people were constantly waking up in the night screaming with pain, so he got little or no sleep. Also the ward was in a building that looked like something from the 1950 (not painted since then). The nurses were so busy that it took him two days to convince them he had insurance. Once they found out he had private insurance, they moved him to a private room, and he got a good doctor, had the surgery and all was well. We don't need Socialized Medicine.

I agree that Americans probably have poor eating habits and don't exercise enough. I am told that Britain is becoming more like the US (people are getting fatter).

My grandparents are (were) both British. Up until my grandmothers death, she would come to the USA to get Asthma treatments because there were high demand on the types of treatments she needed, which created long wait times. As you mentioned, staying at a public hospital over there isn't the same experience as staying at one here. Every time she would come to visit us, she'd arrange a trip to the hospital to take advantage of the better services.

A lot of the socialists in my neck of the woods usually ask me questions like " Well, she didn't end up going bankrupt while she was getting medical service in the UK, right?" And this is true. But sometimes the timing and availability of treatment can make the difference between quick recovery and death.

I agree that Americans probably have poor eating habits and don't exercise enough. I am told that Britain is becoming more like the US (people are getting fatter).

More prosperity and more leisure, more driving places, less walking. I expect that life expectancy will be going downhill from this decade onward, as the generation who were born before antibiotics, before processed foods, and before a car in front of every house die off (in their nineties and hundreds.) They are the ones who are the healthiest of all.

Another Brit hospital story. My husband worked in the Caribbean, but paid his National Health Insurance premium year after year, because he worked for a British company. We were in England when I needed maternity care, and a lot of (snobbish) nurses and new mothers thought that I, an American, had come to England just to take advantage of their maternity care. The fact that my husband was a contributing member of their health system did not change their minds.

It just showed me that people can be very inward looking, no matter where they live.