I feel for the child's parents as the cope with their son's disease at the NHS of England.  That is no reason to think that our health care system is so great.  Similar situations do happen here.   They happend as a courtesy of our for-profit system that favors profits over people's lives and well-being.  Every health system has limits to its ability to provide care and cures.   All of this costs money.  I know of cancer patients who can no longer get treatments or must now pay out of pocket for their care.   The same goes for diabetics who can become very expensive to treat or end-stage cardiac, liver, burn and AIDS patients.    A lot more denial of treatment happens than you could possibly know.  Our system is quite stealthy in how it denies care;  very high deductibles and copays,  prior-authorizations for a goodly number of procedures, high insurance premiums, limitations on doctor visits, type of meds allowed, etc.   Socialized medicine isn't the problem, expectations are..