[pvarangot]

You do realize saying "in socialized medicine" is as vague as saying "in every other country in the world" don't you?

There are 193 members states in the UN, of those 192 have a health care system that I would bet nearly 100% of americans would call "socialized medicine" in a poll. That includes countries like Sweden with completely state controlled top of the line healthcare, also England with state regulated prices for the private sector and also a top 5 in any reasonable metric health care system, or Panama/Argentina/Brazil with a mixed public and private not-top-of-the-line-but-reasonably-working system that includes very cheap private health insurance. It also includes Cuba, that has a very dfferent system than lets say Russia or Chile.

Your remark is as vague and irrelevant as saying "the only difference between HN readers and the rest of the world is that the former usually make vague and irrelevant remarks based on their personal beleifs".