Speaking of socialised medicine.

My friend just had a surgery in Britain, two actually over the last two years with the majority of that period being on waiting lists. The surgeries were successful and professionally done, though in both cases the doctors were foreign as who else wants to work for the NHS.

But because of the extensive wait time one of the results is a life changing permanent partial paralysis that the surgeon specifically blamed on the wait time between diagnosis and surgery. Add to that 2 years of suffering through agonizing discomfort caused by the wait for the procedures. No he didn’t die as a result, and mortality rates for the two conditions are probably similar in the US, but what price having your life disrupted by a two year wait is pain and the disability from the delay?

It was also interesting that the second operation removed residual pain from the first, which predated it but had to be postponed as the second condition appeared during the 9 months of wait for the first operation. At the time I saw a connection between the two which is somewhat supported now, suggesting one operation, or at least the severity of that condition which left the permanent nerve damage, was unnecessary. The surgeon at the time disagreed with me.