The joys of socialised medicine

From a comment posted on Samizdata by Alfred Neumann:

I have [experienced the joys of socialised medicine], resulting from a very bad car accident in Wales. This is what the socialized medicine specialist (not a GP) there told me about a badly shattered part of my body (and this is verbatim, lest anyone accuse me of exaggerating--you don't forget lines like this when your future mobility is at stake):

"I don't know what your American doctor will do, but I wouldn't operate on it." He said "American" with a sneer, of course.

Now, his not operating would have resulted in the shattered bones fusing into a mass, causing me to be unable to walk, or at least normally.

Guess what? My American doctor, upon my return to NYC, completely reconstructed the whole thing, to almost complete freedom of use. I walk normally today.

Fuck. You. Socialized. Medicine.

However, the nurses and Sisters, who were totally overworked, were highly professional. Also, I later found out that I could have been taken to the nearby totally private hospital because I (of course) have private mediacal insurance, and since my insurance was paying either way because I'm not a limey, it could have been paying the private hospital rather than the NHS. Oh well.