“I was shocked to get in a heated debate with one of my Russian colleagues yesterday about Health Care. He left Russia in 1994 at age 26 to come to America. He suggested free health care and education were great things under communism and that America had the wealth to treat health as a liberty. He loves Obama.”
My experience has been the opposite. Have alot of Polish where I live. They hate the idea of socialized medicine. They lived under that system in Poland. They tell me that after age 70, healthcare meant a bed in a hospital and a glass of water....any other care was left to relatives.
Just before communism fell in Poland, I asked my friend's Polish nanny why she was going to the dentist so often. "Oh, it's great here. You have, what's it called?, novocaine?"
Half of my family is in Poland. What you said is true. I'll never forget my visit there, just after the Wall fell. My cousin was driving a WWII era motorcycle (his primary means of transportation) that had been in continuous operation since WWII.
When I came home, I wanted to kiss the ground. By then, it was too late for me to thank my dad for having emigrated from Poland just after the war. He died four years before the Wall fell.
One thing my dad left me was a clear understanding of communism. I have plenty of communist relatives, even on my mother's English side. One of my English uncles is a former Labor union boss (and Marxist). He retired with 4 years sick pay, abandoned his wife, and left to sail around the world on his yacht with his mistress.
If this atrocity is passed, this is exactly what we can expect.
My DH escaped from Communist controlled Poland in the early 80s and was in a refugee camp in Austria for a year or so before he came the US. He hates 0bama and everything he stands for and says, with every fibre of his being.
We would love to be there but we live 3000 miles away.