As Greg Mankiw notes, ” British healthcare is great…as long as you walk on four legs (see http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/08/british-healtcare-is-great.html). The author of the WSJ article, Theodore Dalrymple, concludes his article by noting,

“And what I want, at least for that part of my time that I spend in England, is to be a dog. I also want, wherever I am, the Americans to go on paying for the great majority of the world’s progress in medical research and technological innovation by the preposterous expense of their system: for it is a truth universally acknowledged that American clinical research has long reigned supreme, so overall, the American health-care system must have been doing something right. The rest of the world soon adopts the progress, without the pain of having had to pay for it.”

Health-Care Reform: Do Animals or People Get Better Care? – WSJ.com: Theodore Dalrymple on who gets the better treatment, and what this means for U.S. health-care reform.