Obama's Health Care Rationing: Bureaucrats will decide when to pull the plug
"It's a scary picture the president paints. He stated that 'the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.' For them, he said, 'I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels.'"

Firms with Obama ties profit from health push
"President Barack Obama's push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers."

Dirty Secret No. 1 in Obamacare: Home Visitations for Parents
"While watching these political hot August nights, I decided to research the reasons so many are opposed to Obamacare to separate the facts from the fantasy. What I discovered is that there are indeed dirty little secrets buried deep within the 1,000-plus page health care bill..."

Democratic Health Care Bill Divulges IRS Tax Data
"How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your records? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest and most malcontented federal employee.... So say good-bye to privacy from the federal government. It was fun while it lasted for 233 years.

UK Gov't Healthcare: Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely
"In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death. Under NHS guidance ... they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away..."

UK Gov't Healthcare: 'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed
"In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with 'neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel' treatment."

UK Gov't Healthcare: Man collapses with ruptured appendix... three weeks after NHS doctors 'took it out'
"In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure."

UK Gov't Healthcare: Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in corridors, lifts, offices and hospital toilets
"It shows the incredible waste that has taken place that mothers are getting this sort of sub-standard treatment despite Gordon Brown's tripling of spending on the NHS. Labour have let down mothers by cutting the number of maternity beds and by shutting down maternity units."

UK Gov't Healthcare: Woman gives birth on pavement 'after being refused ambulance'
"A young mother gave birth on a pavement outside a hospital after she was told to make her own way there."

UK Gov't Healthcare: Over 45,000 NHS staff call in sick each day
Over 45,000 NHS staff call in sick every day, which is lowering standards of patient care, according to the first national NHS Health and Wellbeing Review into staff habits.

UK Gov't Healthcare: Prisoners have a better diet than Health Service hospital patients, scientists warn
"Patients in Health Service hospitals are far more likely to go hungry than criminals in jail, scientists warned yesterday."

Canadian Gov't Healthcare: Canadians visit U.S. to get health care
"Hospitals in border cities, including Detroit, are forging lucrative arrangements with Canadian health agencies to provide care not widely available across the border. ... The agreements show how a country with a national care system -- a proposal not part of the health care changes under discussion in Congress -- copes with demand for care with U.S. partnerships, rather than building new facilities."

Canadian Gov't Healthcare: Overhauling health-care system tops agenda at annual meeting of Canada's doctors
"(Canadians) have to understand that the system that we have right now - if it keeps on going without change - is not sustainable..."

Canadian Gov't Healthcare: Thousands of surgeries may be cut in Metro Vancouver due to government underfunding
"Vancouver patients needing neurosurgery, treatment for vascular diseases and other medically necessary procedures can expect to wait longer for care, NDP health critic Adrian Dix said Monday."

French Gov't Healthcare: Not so great either
American patients in effect subsidize the French, who take the same pills at half the price because American pharmaceutical companies don't want to lose the French market. ... "In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died."