Britain's National Health Service is the envy of the world. Believe it or not that, until comparatively recently, was the boast. But no more. The healthcare system in this country increasingly resembles the condition of its patients - sick.
What follows is a true story, remarkable perhaps because it will be considered unremarkable in a proud country boasting the fourth largest economy.
Elizabeth had had no experience of hospitals. Nineteen years before, she had left one five days after her birth wrapped in her mother's arms. Rude good health she took for granted. So sudden pain and sickness came as something of a shock.
Not as big a shock, however, as her exposure to the local accident and emergency department. During her six-hour wait for admission, she had plenty of time to ponder the state of the elderly patients lying on trolleys in the corridors.
At least spared that, she tried not to concentrate on the dried blood stains on the floor and walls, or to dwell on why the NHS found it necessary to put illustrated guides over the hand basins instructing staff how to properly wash their hands.
By the time Elizabeth finally reached the ward, she was ready to argue her pain was subsiding. Two women recovering from surgery looked closer to death than life.
Of the two others, one gamely got off her bed and marched her zimmer frame to the bathroom. Upon returning, she found she wasn't quite so agile when it came to getting back up. But when she beckoned a nurse for help, she was bluntly told: "You'll just have to manage, can't you see that I'm busy."
Maybe this was tough love, adjudged in the old girl's best interest. For certainly the nurse was busy.
Elizabeth's neighbour - bed- ridden, hands swollen with arthritis - explained she was having difficulty eating her meal, transferring ham and lettuce from plate to fork, a feat beyond her. "Now, now Alice," came the superior reply: "What are our hands for?"
What indeed? If you are wise you should not touch anything you don't have to in hospitals were superbugs run rampant and claim thousands of lives a year.
Utterly disgusted, Elizabeth helped Alice finish her meal, her desire for escape accelerating with every minute.
And such feelings of panic, isolation and apprehension would be more acutely felt by younger patients.
A report this week confirmed the needs of teenagers are not being met by Britain's hospital system. The study of some 400 young people showed just one in 10 were being treated in dedicated adolescent wards. Nor was the seeming indifference of some staff in that London hospital isolated or exceptional.
In her contribution to a recent compilation of NHS horror stories for the London Times, Rowena Lawson from York told of "appalling nursing" at Leeds General Infirmary.
After "excellent" consultation and surgery (a third operation on her hip), Ms Lawson was told not to put weight on her leg for 12 weeks, only to find herself on a walking frame within a week.
Taken off Warfarin prescribed by her consultant in York District Hospital, within a month she was found to have blood clots in her leg and rushed back to York Hospital.
"Worse, I was given the harshest of treatments by a night sister, who threw my damaged leg on to the bed and, after I had screamed with pain, said: 'Why are you making that noise? You don't know what pain is'."
The tales are endless of an everyday lottery in which Britain's health system throws-up heart-warming evidence of extraordinary care and dedication, and a catalogue of breathtaking indifference and neglect.
No wonder those patients were smiling last weekend as they headed off to Lille in France for their long-awaited hip or knee- replacement operations.
Five years into a Labour government, however, the people of Britain - those who are sick and those who have yet to fall ill - have nothing to smile about.
One report suggests patients in need of some treatments may be sent to hospitals in Africa, prompting one government critic to remark: "That seems about right. We've got Third World standards; now we're exporting the patients to the Third World."
It doesn't seem right at all.