Today, for somewhere around the 16th time, I told somebody who favored us using the UK or Canadian system of health care that I would have died under that system from an easily treatable ailment. I described in detail how the cancer that grew in my face was misdiagnosed as benign (over 99% of growths where it was are benign), but due to our top rate health care system, I was operated on within a month, and could have made it in the OR in a week if I didn't want to delay until the end of the school year. I told them how, if it had not been removed when it was, the tumor would have spend months, or even years eating away at my liver while doctors prolonged my excruciating life with chemotherapy until I finally wasted away on a hospital bed before reaching drinking age, but that the fact that it got removed when it was means that today, I live a perfectly normal life with minimum side effects and never had to go through that personal hell known as chemotherapy. Under a socialized system, a benign growth like that would have sat there for months, maybe years, until it was too late to do anything but watch me die, and that thought scares the hell out of me.

Once before, when saying this, somebody decided to give his position on the issue serious thought, wondering if horrors like this were worth giving those who couldn't be bothered to get basic health insurance unlimited doctor visits. Four times, I've had somebody naively tell me that things like waiting lists and rationing won't happen here because we'll 'do it right.' However, for about the 11th time today (note, the majority of people I've told this to), somebody told me that my slow and excruciating death at a young age would be an acceptable price to pay if it meant that we had socialized medicine implemented in this country. So far, I haven't hit anybody yet, but if I hear it one more time, I may put a shiner on the asshole. Hell, I may have done it today if he'd added the condescending addendum most people put on it that the only reason I'm alive is because my 'rich' parents (they were middle class and climbing out of a huge debt hole when this happened) gave me access to the 'good' health care in this country (I was diagnosed at the family clinic in town and the surgery was done in a nearby hospital that was built by a charity foundation).