Socialised Medicine: May Contain A Worse Threat Than MRSA....

Slugger led me to a long, long debate on American Healthcare Reform over at Reddit. My favourite comment is about 1000 down, from a Canadian coming to terms with the US system now he's living south of the border:

If you're American and have grown up used to the idea of a private health-care system, try picturing this: Imagine going to a new country and finding out that to call the police was for-profit, and you had a variety of options for licensed police services. If you paid for a good plan, you'd get sub-5-minute response times, you'd get detectives assigned if your car was stolen, and you'd have a cop patrolling your neighborhood on a somewhat regular basis. If you were on a budget, you'd only get a 10-minute response time, and no detectives assigned for major threats or patrols

Well, yes, most of you might think. But as another poster warned, there can be hidden dangers to thinking this way:

But aren't you glad that the government didn't tell you what doctor you had to go see? Like they don't do in any socialized medicare country that I know of? Haven't you considered the various imaginary problems that socialized medicine could cause? You know even talking about it could turn you communist like every other western nation. I'm a Canadian and I've seen people come out of hospitals drop to the ground and suddenly become communists, happens all the time.

Update: Sean at The Soul Of Man under Capitalism has a brilliant Fox TV clip where they seriously discuss the idea that socialised medicine encourages jihadist doctors...