To wait, rather than exclude

I've mentioned before that I've had an occasion or two this year to take advantage of the nationalized health service in operation here. Since then, I've found this to be the most thought provoking difference between the UK and the US. It's been great for me... even being a temporary resident and a non-taxpayer (well, until this week, but that's another story), I'm entitled to free, that's right, FREE health care. As far as I can tell, all necessary medications, operations, and doctor visits are included under the NHS. That's freaking amazing! My mother shattered her elbow while on vacation here a few years ago (hi mom!) and was given excellent care free of charge. It's hard for me to convey to my friends here how much we pay for such things, and that even families with insurance have been known to suffer great financial losses from an unexpected medical incident. And the people without insurance? You don't even want to know.
This is not to say that their system is perfect, or that I'm necessarily advocating a NHS system for the US. There are some things that aren't covered, and for non-emergency procedures they can be on a waiting list for some time. There are several reasons I suspect that it wouldn't work for us, including our pharmaceutical industry, a large number of illegal aliens, and a long tradition of own bootstrap pulling... But most importantly, it wouldn't work because we would never stand for someone telling us that we couldn't have what we wanted when we wanted it. Do we deserve to have excellent healthcare? Absolutely. Should we expect to visit the doctor for a runny nose an hour after calling for an appointment when a good portion of the population can't go to the doctor at all?

As a side note, I've noticed that we increasingly view doctors as magicians. They do lots of good work (particularly in the case of my brother and sister, if I do say so myself) in keeping us as well as possible and disarming some things that would have been fatal even a few short decades ago. However, we are not meant to live forever. Nevertheless we fight death to every expense, including the resources of others and our own dignity. We become angry and assume that a doctor has made a mistake when a loved one dies. I have never lost a parent or a sibling and cannot speak for how I would feel if one of them were gravely ill, so I beg patience from those of you who have. That said, I suppose my view has become that doctors should improve our quality of life, but that quantity is less important.