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Mitt Romney chortles, as he inflicts his socialized medicine (HillaryCARE=ROmneyCARE)
upon the Massachusetts citizens.

"Hospital patients 'left in agony'"
"Patients were allegedly left screaming in pain and drinking from flower vases on a nightmare hospital ward.
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust over three years, a damning Healthcare Commission report said.
The watchdog's investigation found inadequately trained staff who were too few in number, junior doctors left alone in charge at night and patients left without food, drink or medication as their operations were repeatedly cancelled.
Patients were left in pain or forced to sit in soiled bedding for hours at a time and were not given their regular medication, the Commission heard.
Receptionists with no medical training were expected to assess patients coming in to A&E, some of whom needed urgent care.
Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, said there had been a "gross and terrible breach" of patients' trust and a "complete failure of leadership".
The Healthcare Commission's chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said the investigation followed concerns about a higher than normal death rate at the Trust, which senior managers could not explain.
He said: "The resulting report is a shocking story. Our report tells a story of appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients. These are words I have not previously used in any report.
"There were inadequacies in almost every stage of caring for patients. There was no doubt that patients will have suffered and some of them will have died as a result."
Julie Bailey, 47, was so concerned about the care being given to her 86-year-old mother Bella at Stafford Hospital that she and her relatives slept in a chair at her bedside for eight weeks.
She said: "We saw patients drinking out of..."

"Paramedics told: 'Let accident victims die if they want to' in new row over patient rights (UK)"
Health Service paramedics have been told not to resuscitate terminally-ill patients who register on a controversial new database to say they want to die.
It has been set up by the ambulance service in London for hundreds of people who have only a few months to live so that they may register their 'death wishes' in advance.
It is believed to be the first in the country, but other trusts around the country are expected to follow suit to comply with Government guidelines which state that patients' wishes should be taken into account, even at the point of death.
Patients' groups and doctors have welcomed the scheme, but it has met opposition from pro-life groups who say it violates the sanctity of life.
The system would come into play if a cancer patient, for example, was in serious pain and rang 999 for help to alleviate the suffering.
But if the paramedics arrived and the patient was close to death, he or she would not be resuscitated if such a request was registered on the database.
This would also be the case if a patient on the database was being transferred between hospitals, and had a heart attack.
Dominica Roberts from the Pro-Life Alliance said: 'This is very sad and very dangerous. It's another step along the slippery slope, at the bottom of which is euthanasia as we see in Holland. 'Paramedics should be there to save lives. They should not be there to let patients die. The medical profession should not agree with someone's belief that their life is worthless.'"

"National Health Preview - The Massachusetts debacle, coming soon to your neighborhood."
"Three years ago, the former Massachusetts Governor had the inadvertent good sense to create the "universal" health-care program that the White House and Congress now want to inflict on the entire country.
It is proving to be instructive, as Mr. Romney's foresight previews what President Obama, Max Baucus, Ted Kennedy and Pete Stark are cooking up for everyone else.
In Massachusetts's latest crisis, Governor Deval Patrick and his Democratic colleagues are starting to move down the path that government health plans always follow when spending collides with reality -- i.e., price controls.
As costs continue to rise, the inevitable results are coverage restrictions and waiting periods. It was only a matter of time.

They're trying to manage the huge costs of the subsidized middle-class insurance program that is gradually swallowing the state budget.
The program provides low- or no-cost coverage to about 165,000 residents, or three-fifths of the newly insured, and is budgeted at $880 million for 2010, a 7.3% single-year increase that is likely to be optimistic.
The state's overall costs on health programs have increased by 42% (!) since 2006.

What really whipped along RomneyCare were claims that health care would be less expensive if everyone were covered.
But reducing costs while increasing access are irreconcilable issues.
Mr. Romney should have known better before signing on to this not-so-grand experiment, especially since the state's "free market" reforms that he boasts about have proven to be irrelevant when not fictional.
Only 21,000 people have used the "connector" that was supposed to link individuals to private insurers."

A Very Sick Health Plan; Bay State’s ‘Grand Experiment’ Fails [RomneyCare]
"The Daily News Record, Harrisonburg, Va. - 2009-03-31 "
"For folks increasingly leery of President Obama’s plan to radically overhaul America’s health-care system,
or 17 percent of the nation’s economy, all this could hardly have come at a better time —
that is, fiscal troubles aplenty within Repubican Mitt Romney’s brainchild, Massachusetts’ “grand experiment” in “universal” health care."

"Initiated on Mr. Romney’s gubernatorial watch in 2006, this “experiment” has fallen on hard times, and predictably so.
Even though the Bay State commenced its program with a far smaller percentage of uninsured residents than exists nationwide,
“RomneyCare” is threatening to bankrupt the state. Budgeted for Fiscal Year 2010 at $880 million,
or 7.3 percent more than a year ago, this plan, aimed at providing low- or no-cost health coverage to roughly 165,000 residents,
has caused Massachusetts’ overall expenditures on all health-related programs to jump an astounding 42 percent since 2006.

So what does Mr. Romney’s successor, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, propose as a remedy for these skyrocketing costs?
Well, whaddya think? The standard litany of prescriptions (no pun intended) — price controls and spending caps, for a start, and then, again predictably, waiting periods and limitations on coverage.
As in Europe and Canada, so too in Massachusetts. And, we feel certain, everyone from Mr. Romney to Mr. Patrick said, “It would never happen here.”
But then, such things are inevitable when best-laid plans, with all their monstrous costs, run smack-dab into fiscal reality.

"The Horrors of Socialized Health Care" Imagine a modern, first-world country where there is such a shortage of dental care that patients are reduced to pulling their own rotting teeth. This country is the United Kingdom—where ordinary citizens encounter primitive and barbaric dental care practices and experience nightmarish ordeals.
You’re probably wondering how can this be? Before we explain, please read one Scottish man’s horrifying account of dental care in Scotland.
As you read the horrors that this Scottish citizen is going through, please remember that this is a national phenomenon he is describing. See for example this news account.

The United Kingdom provides public, socialized dental care. Socialized care creates shortages and reduces both quality and the rate of innovation.
One of the most basic principles of economics is that if you reduce the price of an item or service below its market price, a shortage of that item is created. In health care, we see this phenomenon in the emergency rooms of hospitals. It is commonplace for patients who are not paying for their care to show-up in emergency rooms with illnesses that do not require emergency medical attention and frequently do not require any medical attention at all. You can wait a long time in an emergency room—there is a shortage of emergency room services.
In the United Kingdom, teeth are still routinely filled with poisonous mercury amalgams. To a citizen of the United Kingdom, innovations, like laser dentistry or one-step dental implants, would be possible only in a science fiction story.

As I read accounts of United Kingdom dental care, I felt compassion for those who go without basic necessities. Be it food, shelter, or medical care, there are still too many deprivations all over the world.
The economically illiterate believe these deprivations can be solved with more government involvement. As I read accounts of UK citizens queuing-up for substandard dental care, I remembered accounts of citizens in the former Soviet Union queuing-up for substandard food.
I thought of our own socialized educational system. We usually don’t think of it as socialized—instead, we call it public education. But the same principles operate.
We pay through the tax system and then, except if you are fortunate enough to have extra income to buy your child private education, you’re forced to use the public school no matter how low the quality is.
Consider inner-city families whose public school doesn’t even provide a basic level of safety for the children. Telling the parents that they should send their children to private schools is an inconceivable possibility.
Similarly, for poor or middle class United Kingdom citizens, private dental care is just not possible. The gentleman whose account you read earlier is clearly thoughtful and caring. I have exchanged views with him on his blog and on my own. Despite all of the suffering that he is experiencing, he still seems to believe that the failures of socialized care are due to to failures in implementation. He does not see that the failure of socialized care is due to a faulty concept.
This is not unlike the former Soviet Union, where the answer to their food problems was always a new five-year plan. It is not unlike the United States, where the answer for the failures of the public schools is always seen to be more money.
In this rush toward socialized services, many imagine that they will get top-notch care while paying less than they do right now. Nothing is further from the truth. For most, the “price” will go up in many ways—new taxes to fund a new healthcare bureaucracy, shortages of services, stagnation of innovation, and reduced quality of car"