Denied food, water, medicine: patients left screaming in agony, drinking from flowerpots, lying helpless in their own waste

It's already happening in Europe

In Europe, governments already ration health care, just as Obama plans to do here. The older and sicker people are, the less care they get.

In England, for example, bureaucrats determine a patient's eligibility for health care using the QALY system (quality-adjusted life years). They divide the cost of treatment by the number of "quality" years the patient is expected to live. Older, sicker patients are expected to live fewer "quality" years, so why bother treating them at all? On this basis, British elders are routinely denied treatment for cancer, heart disease and other deadly illnesses.

Many die in filthy, overcrowded hospitals or nursing homes, rife with pestilence, including the deadly, antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" Clostridium difficile and MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Each year in the U.K., nearly three times more people die from hospital infections than from traffic accidents.

In the nation where Florence Nightingale invented modern nursing 150 years ago, cleanliness has become a lost art. British newspapers reported in 2007 that patients in government hospitals were told to "go in their beds" when they had diarrhea.

In March 2009, British health inspectors reported that poor treatment at one hospital may have killed up to 1,200 people in three years. That's 1,200 people at just one hospital.

Denied food, water and medicine, patients at Stafford Hospital in Staffordshire were left screaming in agony, drinking from flowerpots and lying helpless in their own waste. Many waited for operations which were repeatedly postponed.

British officials were quick to label the Stafford horror an "isolated incident." But many health care professionals in England say it is typical. Unfortunately, dissenters have little voice in Britain's National Health Service. The system is notoriously hostile to whistleblowers.

Read the whole thing: it's your future with ObamaCare