This is anecdotal evidence. We don't know if Actual Government Run American Healthcare will work better or WORSE than these anecdotes.

I haven't read the book. So far all four reviews are five star. It could be the author's brother in law and his married cousin though. But this excerpt I got by e-mail was interesting.

Fourteen Hospitals Turn Away Critically-Injured Elderly Man

Rescue workers in Japan called fourteen hospitals before finding one that would take an elderly bicyclist who collided with a motorcycle.

The accident, which occurred at 10:15 pm in the Japanese city of Itami, left the 69-year-old bicyclist, who was not identified, in critical condition with back and head injuries. Paramedics arrived on the scene five minutes after the crash and administered first aid. Yet, for about an hour, they were unsuccessful at locating a hospital to treat the man.

Helpless, the elderly man waited in the ambulance at the accident scene as hospital after hospital rejected treating him, citing unavailable beds, staff shortages and a lack of equipment and specialists. All told, fourteen hospitals in the neighboring prefectures - i.e., governing districts - of Hyogo and Osaka refused his entry.

"There were four other emergency calls in the same time frame of that night," explained Mitsuhisa Ikemoto, the fire department spokesman. "[A]s a result, we were unable to find a hospital."

It took a second round of calls for rescue workers to find a hospital. Finally, at 11:30 that night - 75 minutes after the accident - they took him to a hospital in Itami, which had initially declined to accept him. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that the hospital's resources that night were unsatisfactory.

Cross Posted at Power and Control