Freedom!

Andrew Sullivan discusses the different attitudes towards health care in Britain and America. First the British:

Brits simply believe suffering is an important part of life, especially through ill health. Going to the doctor is often viewed as a moral failure, a sign of weakness. This is a cultural function of decades of conditioning that success is morally problematic and that translating that success into better health is morally inexcusable.

Some might call this a healthy, CONSERVATIVE attitude towards life. You can't always get what you want, but you just might find you get what you need (I believe some rather famous English chaps said that somewhere).

Then the Americans:

But if most Americans with insurance had to live under the NHS for a day, there would be a revolution. It was one of my first epiphanies about most Americans: they believe in demanding and expecting the best from healthcare, not enduring and surviving the worst, because it is their collective obligation.

There's another word for people who think they should always get the best and that the world is obligated to give it to them: spoiled. Is this really Andrew's idea of a positive portrayal of America?

Apparently it is:

Ah, I thought. This is how free people think and act. Which, for much of the left, is, of course, the problem.

Freedom means getting as much as you can while paying the least for it? Seems like a rather limited vision of freedom.