Emmy Rossum [1], the 27-year-old star of Showtime’s Shameless [2], which had its fourth season debut Sunday night (Jan 12), on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live marveled at the “amazing” and “free health care” in Britain.
Recounting her travails during a recent visit to the nation with nationalized healthcare, she told Kimmel that food poisoning sent her to a hospital. “The hospitals are amazing there,” she exclaimed, citing “free health care” and how “they don’t even ask you for your I.D. You give your name, you give your symptoms, they hook you up to a bunch of fluids. They say just leave when you feel like it. You pay nothing!”
She soon repeated: “I paid nothing. They treated me for hours, I paid nothing. Amazing...It was amazing.”
Audio: MP3 clip [3]
I’m sure the citizens of Britain are “amazed” their tax dollars provided “free” care to the highly-paid visiting American television star who was oblivious to who pays.
On Shameless, Rossum plays “Fiona Gallagher [4],” the oldest daughter in a Chicago family with an alcoholic father which scams the system to live off government largess, such as cashing Social Security checks for long-dead relatives.
— Brent Baker is the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Follow Brent Baker on Twitter. [5]