Yes, it's U.S. specific. I don't think it will happen in the EU. The EU may go through some changes, but I feel that health care will continue to be seen as something that countries need as part of a sound infrastructure.

Unfortunately the change is inevitable, just as with pensions, because the population is aging and there isn't enough youth left to pay for it. And due to automatization or outsourcing, cheap labor is less and less needed anyway and high unemployment rates will be pretty common.

This reality in fact highlights another reality - our economic models based on scarcity don't work anymore and we need to either transcend it, maybe with technological improvements that drops the price of basic necessities, like food, energy and medical healthcare, or we're fucked.

> our economic models based on scarcity don't work anymore

Wait, isn't the premise of your comment that healthcare is too scarce?

Well, yes. I also believe it shouldn't be.

In the UK, it could be fairly soon.

I have a lot of close personal acquaintances from the UK and ask them quite often if it's built-in that people from the UK are so conspiracy, negatively, gloomy driven. More than most countries I've been to, Brits are overly negative about most things and admit they are if you ask. Almost with pleasure they explain soon pensioners houses on the coast of Spain will be demolished, soon pensions will end, soon hospitals outside the UK will stop helping UK citizens (but ONLY UK citizens!). Then the go on that the UK is the most expensive, horrible, crappy country to live in, the NHS sucks, all hotels are bad, a cup of coffee costs gbp 20 and real ale isn't real anymore. And more expensive than in the rest of the world.

It won't happen soon in the UK. It's just your and your fellow country folks' nature to think that.

To be fair I think that's a minority of people in the UK who think like that - one cause is that reading the Daily Mail rots the parts of the brain capable of positive thinking.

Meanwhile, my family has had excellent experiences with the NHS recently, I live and work in the center of a fantastic city (Edinburgh), I know plenty of excellent hotels and restaurants, I don't drink expensive coffee, I know plenty of good beers and outside the sky is blue...

[Amused to see the other comment mentioning the Daily Mail - it really is poison.]

Daily Mail headline generator:

http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/

"WILL TEENAGE SEX DEFRAUD HOMEOWNERS?"

"WILL THE FRENCH BURGLE YOUR CHILDREN?"

"HAS THE HOUSE PRICE CRASH KILLED BRITISH SOVEREIGNTY?"

"ARE TEACHERS DEVALUING PROPERTY PRICES?"

The main themes in the Daily Mail headlines being: cancer, property prices, immigrants and celebrities...

I did always wonder...

"HAVE LESBIANS STOLEN FROM YOUR PETS?"

I've lived in the UK on and off for a big part of my life. I think there are several reasons for what you hear. The most common is that expats tend to complain about their country of origin, hence why they are expats. The other thing is that it's probably the general negative sentiment of the population of a former empire that is declining in status. There is limited optimism about the future, this shows in their fiction too. I think part of it is also the weather, the message of doom seems to take a break when the sun comes out. The other things are probably true, like how much the NHS sucks, and how expensive and poor service in the leisure industry is. The UK, like other parts of Europe, also has an aging population issue, and this has a lot of big impacts. The most prominent is that the structure of pensions will have to change dramatically at some point, but it also has other effects like the bulk of the voting population just naturally having the kinds of opinions that are reflected in the Daily Mail (get off my lawn, not in my back yard, get on your bike and get a job, etc.), and because of this younger people and their political opinions aren't catered for by politicians since there are limited votes in it.

> It won't happen soon in the UK. It's just your and your fellow country folks' nature to think that.

While you do have a point about the temperament of people in the UK. And even leaving out the Daily Mail - I don't go near it and friends don't let friends ... etc.

But. The NHS is changing a lot under the current administration. There is a lot of privatisation. That is fact. There are fairly good reasons to believe that it may be a "protect it or lose it" situation, especially if the Conservative party continues in power after the 2015 elections http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/farewell-to-the-nhs-1948...

And complaining about losing it is a start to protecting it.

TL;DR : it is "Argument from fallacy" to say that "your nature is to think that everything is going to go wrong, therefore this will not go wrong" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

Try asking your friends if they read the Daily Mail. Then get some new friends. I'm glad that I don't know anyone that remotely fits your description.

Asked one of them who is online now and he said his parents do but he would never touch it :) So I guess he's been raised with that kind of talk around the dinner table.

But only for UK natives.

Benefits tourists from any foreign country are invited to set up shop in the UK for free welfare, medical care, dental care, and a black cab to the welfare office where you can pick up your free money.

Gypsy and Muslim families with 15 children are particularly welcome. Criminal record in your home country optional.

(OK, did I do the Daily Mail right?)

That kind of talk goes on in a minority of livingrooms of families in every country. However I was going on about a slightly less right wing version of that which I think is far more common in the UK than elsewhere; so not the underbelly 'everyone is getting a break, especially foreigners' feeling, but more like the everything is shit and our government is doing nothing for us feeling. Seems that very negative thing is something Brits seem to be far more vocal about than others. Still could mean I meet the 'wrong' people; I just don't have that feeling; I wouldn't really be able to get along with the typical 'Daily Mail' reader now that I have identified and matched up with an equivalent in my country (Netherlands).