When I was in college, I traveled to Europe several times. On three occasions I came into close and personal contact with the health care systems of Britain and the Netherlands, and I've never forgotten how profoundly different the experiences were from anything I'd encountered growing up Stateside.
I got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help catalog a collection of rare Victorian children's literature donated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. The Bodleian is renowned for its vast collections of unique books, but mere mortals aren't allowed back in the stacks. They need to order books from a librarian to be retrieved later and read under supervision. Me, I got to browse through boxes and handle whatever tickled my fancy. It became routine finding volumes of Alice in Wonderland that Lewis Carroll had signed.
A week into what I hoped would be months of discoveries, I had an accident. The tutor who got me the job asked me to retrieve a book on a shelf too high for her. As I pulled the book down, its 17th-century cover crumbled. A clump of ancient leather caught me square in the eye.
My immediate thought was that I'd just blown the best gig an aspiring bibliophile could hope for. There was so much stuff crammed under my eyelid I couldn't blink, and it hurt. I pictured myself on a plane home the next day, cradling a massive eye patch, with my parents fretting about the cost of my care at the other end of the flight.
My colleagues suggested they take me to the hospital. I resisted, saying I could wash my eye out myself in the sink. They were incredulous: not just about my desire to heal myself, but about my resistance to seeking professional care. After splashing water in my eye only made things worse, though, I relented.
My visit to the Oxford urgent care ward lasted less than an hour. None of it was spent waiting. After taking only my name and local address, a nurse saw me immediately and cleaned my eye out. An eye doctor was available minutes later, and he put all his expensive optical gear through its paces, looking into my eye for damage. He gave me a slip for eye drops that I picked up from another desk. The pharmacist only smiled when I asked the cost. I was back working on the books the next day, wearing goggles.
I barely remember my time in the Oxford hospital, but I'll never forget the expression on my tutor's face when I hesitated to go to the hospital. It was as if I'd said something the Mad Hatter would say to Alice. In a civilized world, that expression said, why would anyone resist going to the hospital when they were injured?
Several years later, my girlfriend and I got a BritRail Pass and hauled our backpacks between hostels across the United Kingdom. A few weeks into our trip, I ran out of a prescription. Again, my first instinct was to go without, and when it became apparent that that wasn't going to work, we instinctively assumed the fun was over. Even after my experience in Oxford, I quickly came up with reasons that I'd be denied care (I wasn't a student any more, times and legislation had changed, and more) before I got up the courage to try.
The kind medical folks in York were as efficient and effective as their southern colleagues had been, and my girlfriend was astonished when I returned to her in the waiting room and she'd only gotten a page or so into an article. It would have been faster, but it took the pharmacist some time to figure out what my brand name drug translated to in the terminology the rest of the world used.
More nonsense: in a world where health care is a right rather than a commodity, why spend money to create new identities for medicines that are already universally known by their chemical names to the doctors who prescribe them?
The two experiences gave me a glimpse at an alternate world where many of the deep concerns about health care that plague most Americans their whole lives had been eradicated. In countries with public health care, disaster strikes the rich and the poor with the same severity, and everyone has the same hope for recovery.
During my final brush with European health care, I didn't actually see anyone in the medical profession, but considering the circumstances, that was noteworthy.
First, a quick flashback. When I was a kid in the States, my brother and I once played tag in a department store while our mother shopped. I ran into a glass shelf, giving myself a nasty cut on my forehead—ugly, lots of blood, but not serious. The reaction from the store staff was immediate: I was swept into the manager's office, and I was doused with hydrogen peroxide and apologies. I got a Band-Aid and a free soda. They offered to call an ambulance, gave my brother some candy, and my mom was asked to sign some papers.
Years later, I was an exchange student in the Netherlands, and one afternoon I was riding an escalator in a department store. The moving metal stairs were crammed with shoppers, and as I approached the top, I felt something tug at my toe. When I pulled back, whatever was tugging at my sneaker tugged harder. I remembered a friend at summer camp whose hand had been covered in a web of scars after he got it caught in an escalator, and I freaked. I pulled with all my might, and as we stepped off the escalator, my Dutch mom asked me why I'd screamed.
I pointed to my Converse All Star sneaker and the ragged hole that had been eaten out of the rubber. My wholly intact toes poked out tentatively, badly pinched but nothing serious.
I'm not certain what I was expecting, but I got very little beyond mild regret for my destroyed footwear. While life continued around me as if nothing had happened in the busy department store, righteous indignation surged through my veins. Judging both by my personal experience (see previous flashback) and by every cop, court, or emergency room drama I'd ever seen on TV, this was not what happened when someone nearly got ripped to pieces by a faulty, out-of-control, teen-eating escalator.
Shut the escalator down! Get me management!
Reluctantly, my Dutch mother helped me find the manager. I thought her hesitation was because she simply didn't understand the severity of the situation: I had no doubt that I was completely in the right and deserving of compensation. I'd decided the store owed me a new pair of shoes.
The manager heard me out, looked over at the escalator, still full of people using it safely, and said, "No one else has been hurt. Escalators can be dangerous. You must be careful where you stand." Unwilling to oblige me, he suggested I write a letter to the head of the company.
By the time I got a coupon for free shoes (given without admitting fault and gently suggesting my demands were ridiculous and I was simply being indulged), I was no longer so certain I was right or deserving.
The rest of my Dutch family and friends sided with my Dutch mother and the store manager: I was the only person responsible for my behavior on the escalator. No one else needed to be held accountable or penalized for my behavior. Even if I'd gotten hurt and required surgery, with nationalized health care there was no reason for litigation over who pays the medical bills. Accidents happen and, in a world where medical attention is a right, businesses don't risk financial ruin if a dumb kid behaves badly on their property.
Simply put, what the public pays for in countries with a public health system is increased freedom, along with a greater sense of responsibility to the public to which they belong. Instead of pouring money into marketing, litigation and insurance, countries with public health care can fund new industries that actually produce something that invests in a better future.
Those who are against public health care are on the nonsensical side of the looking glass: their interests aren't those of the public. Commercial health care has made America a nation of litigious, indignant and cynical consumers (just like me), and those opposed to making health care public are those invested in profiting off that status quo.
