Socialized healthcare has emerged as a highly debated issue in the United States, attracting the attention from the media, as well as policy solution for political leaders. Both political parties are under increasing pressure to address the insurance and healthcare crises, in America. However, socialized healthcare has not been an effective or efficient solution to address these issues, in other countries, and rather has caused many healthcare systems to crumble. A portion of the challenge of rising healthcare costs is due to individuals not becoming sufficiently involved in decisions regarding their health and medical care or payment for services rendered. Instead, they simply entrust third parties, such as insurance companies, to make these decisions. Bills to fund health insurance for underprivileged children continue to be debated in Washington D.C.. There is a significant amount of support for some form of socialized medicine, a system of government controlled healthcare funded via taxation; however, there are significant downsides that must be considered before such a system can become a reality.
             One only has to look at the National Health Service (NHS) in Great Britain to begin to appreciate the challenges with socialized medicine. Founded in 1948, the NHS experiment quickly became more costly than anticipated. Today, one in eight patients wait more than a year for treatment (Carvel, 2007, s), prescription drugs are limited or unavailable for many, and the facilities are not up to par (Kelland, 2006, 1). Add to this government officials skimming funds and lagging research, and it quickly becomes a system no country would want to emulate.
             In order to cut costs in France, as is typical of government officials, their socialized healthcare program decided to buy heat-treated blood from foreign labs. Much of this substandard blood was tainted with AIDS and infected 3,000 patients. Canadians too find lengthy waits f...