It can and does work. I live in the UK.

Our country is full of immigrants, immgrants who breed; also, junkies, fat people, and smokers dying of emphysema. Now, under new British work law, all of the above who don't work will be forced to, as street-cleaners and the like, and they will pay tax as I do towards the running of the NHS.

Even if they didn't, I wouldn't care. Maybe you're all unsure of it because you're not used to it. I have never had to consider paying for care in my life, and when I'm old, I won't have to pay for my retirement home either (this, sadly, only applies in Scotland at the moment). My mother suffers from a chronic condition which flared up one night, her brain swelled right up. She was given care on demand. She's never had fluffed pillows and nicely-lit rooms, but she's alive.

I am forced to consider this: if we had lived in America when my mother's Lupus began, given the financial mess we were in, she'd probably be dead. She needed emergency care, then intsensive drugs, and then specialist appointments with rheumatologists. This didn't happen as quickly as it could have, but the NHS will never make someone wait if they know that that wait will harm them. It might not be comfortable for them, but as long as it won't hurt them, it can happen, bearing in mind that the service is free.

In America, she'd have had to pay for the initial GP callout in the middle of the night. Then, the ambulance. Then, the team in A&E that saved her brain. Then, the tests and hospital stay that led to her diagnosis. Then, her drugs, and follow up appointments every six weeks with rheumatolgists for more advanced tests and checks to see whether or not her drugs needed adjusted. In America, there'd be no money for this. What essential steps would we have had to miss?

The standard of care could have been better, but not by any great margin. What matters is that at the end of the day she was seen to.

My friend's parents are both doctors. Through them I have learned how the NHS keep hypochondriacs out, and how they balance the books. The system is not as good as it could be, but it works.

America's technology is beyond a doubt the best in the world. America's healthcare is, I believe, roughly of the same standard as that in Indonesia, simply because most of the people aren't allowed near the big rooms and machines.

There are hardly any people in countries with universal healthcare who will argue against it, because it is the right way to do things. Sasquatch, in a world where you and your family were denied insurance, you'd support it too. And it could happen to you. My family was doing well for itself until matters far beyond our control brought us down, and we might never have gotten back up were it not for the NHS. And the time my brother got smacked in the face with a golf club, the time I got stabbed in the leg, that time my dad crashed his bike, the day when baby Gilbert fell down the stairs...we all owe them something. And we'll never pay as much as we should have for it, because others help us to bear the cost in return for us helping them.