And yet many socialist countries still find they provide cheaper and more comprehensive medical for their citizens than the US can for theirs. Do the people of Germany and Canada lie awake at night worrying about a few grifters in gov't stealing from the medical systems? No. Do some Americans lie awake at night worrying about being bankrupted by the for profit medical industry or worse dying because they can't afford treatment and meds? Yes they do.
You have no idea what everyone in Germany and Canada feel or worry about. You are projecting your fears and your preferences on people you don't know or understand.
Many people in those countries feel extreme anxiety over their loss of freedoms and over what is being done in their name by Governments who dictate their futures, instead of listening to what people want.
Germany has a weird mix of private and public healthcare which by all accounts works well for them. It certainly works better than the staggering mess that is the UK's NHS, the ultimate destination of socialised healthcare. Germany isn't very far down the road of socialised healthcare at this point.
That said, Germans as a rule appear, to me, to be a very cohesive, organised people. Many of them seem to think nothing of having every aspect of their lives organised by their leaders, whom they trust. Even leaders such as Merkle, if you can believe that.
The tendency of Leftists like yourself to apply equivalency to every country and every culture is nothing short of astonishing to me. Apply your logic, your preferences and your instincts equally to the people of Germany, Poland, Hungary, Japan, Malaysia, Australia, Bahrain, Oman, Greece ... your template of "what is best for a people" is laughably useless. You can't even catch the mood of a sizeable chunk of the people you share a country with.
In any event, you aren't really talking about Socialist countries, you are talking about countries that dabble with Socialism. The problem with "partial Socialism is", it's never quite enough. Socialised healthcare must be expanded because the line between essential care and elective care is blurry and forever being re-drawn, in accordance with newly identified priorities.
After healthcare, the next thing to worry about is an income for everyone, whether they work or not. The mission creep on that sucker is something you have no comprehension of.
Housing must be supplied for all next. Dependency on Gubmint goes from "in case of emergency" to "lifestyle choice". The pool of people who are meant to be working, whose earnings are tapped to support people who do not work, gradually shrinks, as people realise that they fools for slaving away purely so that teenagers can have children and get "free" housing.
There is always a requirement to expand Socialism. Always. If there is a moral imperative to save lives, how can we draw the line at saving limbs? If saving limbs is a priority, surely "mental health" is a priority? If mental health is a priority, surely boob-jobs and gender reassignments are a priority? There are similar progressions for state handouts and state-provided housing. It never ends because the people who cannot bear to see hardship will always identify new hardships to be addressed. And it all has to be paid for. Free ain't free.
I have a saying that I employ at times like this, and I am not being flippant - "If I can no longer afford to work for a living, I will have to give it up". I am not kidding. The more that gubmint is required to look after people, the more taxes people who work and who create wealth have to shell out. This leads invariably to a loss of taxation revenues, higher taxes, loss of wealth-creators, loss of the middle-class and their tax payments and then you live in Venezuela.
TL;DR: Socialism begins as a arrow-tip and ends when when most of the population get the shaft.
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