Three weeks ago on the Something Awful boards, poster Mourning Due started a thread called "Sick of hearing my country bashed in Congress, so: Healthcare Stories", calling on people in the United States, Canada, England, Australia and other people to :
...post our experiences with the health care systems of our countries. Doesn't matter if they're negative experiences with the Canadian system or positive experiences with the American one, let's hear some real personal anecdotes as to how we've been treated and how much we've paid.
Three weeks later, the thread is filled with over 40 pages of trauma, disasters, pain, loss and soul-crushing agony, and what it cost for the victims.
The trend was unmistakable, with US Citizens who are $200,000 in debt for a new baby to another who's Type-1 Diabetes have cost over half a million dollars so far, to families having sold their house to pay for their child's leukemia treatment.
US Citizens are comparing their stories of pain and loss with people who have undergone similar issues under, to be frank, more civilized countries. Countries where a 5 second accident doesn't mean bankruptcy, where a new child is met with pure joy rather then being tainted with financial worries, where a child's illness doesn't destroy the livelihood of the parents.
Now I won't say that people from countries with real health care systems always said "my country is perfect", but the sheer insanity of the US system was met with disbelief by non-Americans.
This thread has led to the development of a new website (of which I'm not associated with, but I support the idea completly). Visit The Plural of Anecdote, which is casting the net wider then the forums and looking for stories of people experiences with medical procedures from both US and Universal Health Care countries, and displaying them side by side. Visit it to see two people's experiences compared side by side, or submit your own anonymously.
At the moment, honestly, we are missing a lot of US stories simply because people from the original thread tended to be from other countries, but if more people find out about it then we can turn it into a real resource.