Well i can tell you that as a commie canadian, we enjoy the entitlement to not be financially crippled randomly for some medical emergency beyond our control. Multiply that security by the whole population and you have a higher standard of living and a happier population. Costs can be managed by preemptively treating diseases and disorders earlier on (you americans like preemptive strikes right?) and this reduces longer-term costs.
But yeah, Slashdot IS packed with knee jerk reactionary dicks who think they have all the angles covered, especially the kind that make arguments appeal to fiscal matters or some charming and illusory reference to responsibility while simultaneously ignoring people in his own country who are falling between the cracks.