We moved from the US to the UK around 15 years ago. Britain's National Health Service is a taxpayer-funded universal health service, run by the government and available to all citizens and legal residents and free at the point of use. These are its founding principles and the NHS has broad public support which crosses all party lines. I suppose the NHS is probably one of the purest examples of "socialised medicine." My daughter was diagnosed with thyroid cancer as a young adult. Once the diagnosis was made she was operated on within weeks. The surgeon was very skilled, the nurses very attentive and the hospital was white-glove spotless. Once she had sufficiently recovered from the surgery she was again hospitalised for the radiation treatment. Five years later she is now cancer-free. She has yearly followup visits with the oncologist, and has to take thyroxine for the rest of her life. At the time, my daughter was a student and part-time coffee shop barista. She paid not a penny out of pocket for her treatment, and gets her ongoing prescriptions at no cost. The Brits view healthcare as a human right and the National Health Service as a mark of a civilized society. Americans certainly deserve no less.