Meet Tim Gallego. Diagnosed eight years ago with mouth cancer, Tim required surgery which cost him ten teeth, his nose and his lower face.
'Within a week of being diagnosed, my dog died and Katie found out she was pregnant with Imogen, our first child.
'After the operation I was already looking like a monster and then ended up with a face like a basketball, I was so badly swollen.
Unfortunately for Tim, he is a resident of Great Britain which means he was forced to wait in long lines with the rest of his fellow sufferers while the one overworked, underpaid doctor in his ward tended to their diseased decrepit bodies. Medical care in Great Britain is a scene straight from Zombieville!
Wait a minute... the right wing talking points on the British health care system seem to have taken over this diary. You know, the talking points about how Stephen Hawking would not have survived this long if he were covered by British health care, (oddly enough Hawking is very much alive AND treated by the British National Health Service) or that Ted Kennedy's brain tumor would have gone untreated because of his age under the British system (Chuck Grassley lied about this, there is no age limit under the British plan) and so on and so forth. In fact please read about the letter signed by over 1000 British doctors to rebut the wing ding smears of British health care at this link.
Actually, Tim Gallego underwent years of reconstructive surgery. He had one of his own ribs transplanted to serve as his jaw bone, arteries and skin grafts from his legs and wrist bones used to reconstruct his face. Sixteen operations later Tim Gallego has been given the 'all clear'. Looking at his picture, it really is remarkable how well he looks after his ordeal. (I don't know how to embed a picture if the code is not written on the other site, but please link over and look for yourself.)
Under the Eric Cantor health care system, if any little thing had gone wrong with his insurance company, (and you can just imagine how eager any insurance company would be to pay for 16 operations over 8 years) Gallego would have sold all of his worldly possessions, gone hat in hand to charity and declared bankruptcy to reach this point in his life. But somehow according to the right wing freakazoids, it is the British health care system which Americans ought to fear.
Go figure.
Update. Here is a picture of Mr. Gallego, thanks to Nathan45.