"This is a hospital, not an office!"

Fred Clark has a good comment regarding health care.
Go read it.
I especially like this note among the comments.

I live in Dublin, about the least socialist of the European health care systems (we all have to buy private hospital cover, which is very cheap (€5/week) because it can't choose who or what it covers or how much it charges who). Our system has problems -- copayments of €30 or €40 to see a doctor are a bit hard on the elderly, and the hospitals have a chronic shortage of beds - but it's nothing like the States. When I visited Copenhagen recently, my girlfriend got an eye injury, and we went to the hospital. They fixed her up, and then we thought we should look around for the billing desk to fill out the always-necessary forms and present the insurance cards. There wasn't one. Anywhere. We asked, and they laughed at us -- 'This is a hospital, not an office!' Bet that makes their health care cheaper, too.