Atrocities,
If you come to visit me in Italy and suddenly (I sincerely hope not) your heart has a problem in my house, and if (I dunno, but let's suppose) you are poor and don't have any health insurance, you will be brought to the nearest hospital immediately. You could stay even a week there under observation of medics. If your heart problem is big, you would be carried by helicopter to Florence (where there are the best nearer hospitals to my hometown), and if necessary they would find a new heart for you as soon as possible, for an intensive surgical operation of replacement with half a dozen of medics.
All of this, completely free for you (except maybe minor tax expenses, the so called tickets), but payed by my (and Italian) taxes, which I would be glad to have payed DOUBLED if it could help to save your or s.o. else's life.
This is the kind of "socialism" you fear in modern states. (See "Sicko" by Michael Moore for further details
)
Nothing to fear, really.
P.S. not that I say that my country is great, really, I'm probably going away as soon as I finish the University, but that's another story at all
