For yet another shuddering preview of life under Obamacare coming to a hospital and doctor's office near you read the latest frightening news from England, the home of socialized medicine, so beloved by liberals here who don't endure it...yet.  England's paper, The Telegraph highlights a few recent horrors.

Socialized medicine is expensive. So to cut costs 

Hospitals 'letting patients die to save money'

Hospitals may be depriving elderly patients of food and drink to hasten their deaths as part of cost-cutting measures to free up bed space, leading doctors warn.

Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses are placed on a "death pathway" to help end their lives every year. However, in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, six doctors warn that hospitals may be using the controversial scheme to reduce strain on hospital resources.

Supporters of the Liverpool Care Pathway, which allows medical staff to withhold fluid and drugs in a patient's final days, claim it is the kindest way of letting them slip away. But the experts say in their letter that natural deaths are often freer of pain and distress.

Informed consent is not always being sought by doctors, who fail to ask patients about their wishes while they are still in control of their faculties, warn the six. This has led to an increase in patients carrying cards informing doctors that they do not wish to be put on the pathway in the last few days of their lives.

In other words, once again Sarah Palin (R) was absolutely correct warning about death panels.  She saw England from her house in Alaska.  Take that Tina Fey.

In another horror health story from the paper

Hundreds die from strokes at weekends because of poorer NHS care: study

Hundreds of people die or suffer serious disability unnecessarily every year because they suffer a stroke at a weekend when NHS care is poorer, a major study has found.

Patients who are admitted to hospital at the weekend suffering from a stroke are less likely to receive vital brain scans and more are more likely to die than those seen during the week, a study of NHS hospitals has found.

A team from Imperial College London and the National Audit Office has found 350 people die within seven days of their stroke unnecessarily because they were admitted at the weekend and a further 650 suffer serious disability.

Elsewhere the paper reported on a young man who died of dehydration--lack of water--because of incompetent, no make that negligent, hospital care.

Due to his condition, he needed hormone medication to control fluid levels in his body, but despite repeated reminders by Kane and his family, staff failed to give him the tablets.

He became severely dehydrated but his requests for water were refused and he died on May 28 2009.

After his death, while Kane's family held his lifeless body, they were asked by a nurse whether they had "finished" and could she "bag him up now," the hearing at Westminster Coroner's Court was told.

A coroner had such grave concerns about the case she referred it to the police.

Mrs Cronin told the hearing: "He sounded really, really distressed. He said 'they won't give me anything to drink.'

"He also said 'I've called the police.' He said: 'I've called the police you better get here quickly, they're all standing around the bed getting their stories straight.'"

Ms Cronin added: "They weren't doing anything. They seemed out of their depth. It felt to me like the two locum doctors were nervous about calling anyone more senior than them, I would have expected them to do that."

Meanwhile

Specialist doctors at the hospital who had been treating him for a year and knew of his rare medical needs were not even told he was in the building until after he died, Westminster Coroner's Court heard.

Well yes, mistakes do happen; even in American hospitals. But so routinely?

But now you know how President Barack Obama (D) will put the affordable into the Affordable Health Care Act.  It is your life. Or was.