I visited Rome, Italy in 1996 and became ill. I spent 5 days in an Italian hospital. Italy has socialized medicine, and it was a nightmare! I had to bring my own toilet tissue, first to the ER, and then the entire week I was hospitalized. I needed to bring my own hand soap, and silverware.! Not much was very clean by American standards, and the IV drip had to be re introduced into another place in my arm every two hours. My arm looked like the arm of a drug junkie. I am not eager to see socialized medicine in any universal form in the US, needless to say. No doubt it didn't start out in Italy that way, but it ended up being a pretty bad experience. When I got off the plane in Sacramento, and went straight to Kaiser Hospital, they diagnosed the problem (C Difficill), and I was treated and recovered.....just sayin'. ......