That is certainly not the norm. I lived in the UK for 3 decades, and it's definitely not like that. The level of care is very good, and the vast majority of the population are happy with it.
There are incredibly powerful vested interests in the US who find it useful to convince as many people as possible that socialized medicine is awful and must be avoided at all costs. As a result, there's a huge amount of propaganda floating about, using techniques ranging from cherry-picking (it's bad because of these specific example cases) to outright lies (socialized medicine is why European states are bankrupt). A sadly large number of Americans believe it. Everyone then gets terribly confused when such a person bumps into a European who never noticed that the health care system they used all their life is actually a communist hellhole.