Venezuela's medical care system collapsing under Socialism

Well, at least Chavez was able to get doctors from Spain or Cuba to provide him medical care for his cancer.  But at least Venezuelans can get easy to provide products such as toilet paper and milk.  From the Associated Press:

Evelina Gonzalez was supposed to undergo cancer surgery in July following chemotherapy but wound up shuttling from hospital to hospital in search of an available operating table. On the crest of her left breast, a mocha-colored tumor doubled in size and now bulges through her white spandex tank top. 

Gonzalez is on a list of 31 breast cancer patients waiting to have tumors removed at one of Venezuela's biggest medical facilities, Maracay's Central Hospital. But like legions of the sick across the country, she's been neglected by a health care system doctors say is collapsing after years of deterioration. 

Doctors at the hospital sent home 300 cancer patients last month when supply shortages and overtaxed equipment made it impossible for them to perform non-emergency surgeries.  

Driving the crisis in health care are the same forces that have left Venezuelans scrambling to find toilet paper, milk and automobile parts. Economists blame government mismanagement and currency controls set by the late President Hugo Chavez for inflation pushing 50 percent annually. The government controls the dollars needed to buy medical supplies and has simply not made enough available. . . .

With only 8 out of every 100 murders ending in arrest, is it at all surprising that Venezuela's murder rate has soared to 67 per 100,000 people?

The US murder rate is about 4.5 per 100,000.  Venezuela's is over 67 per 100,000.  From Fox News:

In 2011 there were 18,850 murders, up from 4,550 in 1998, along with 16,000 kidnappings, up from a few hundred in 1998. Only eight out of every 100 murders committed in the country of 28 million end in an arrest. 

"Venezuela has become a criminalized state," said Vanessa Neumann, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, according to USA Today. "You have drug traffickers and Colombian guerrillas operating in the country, and government officials have become involved with them. That makes it difficult to combat crime." 

While Chavez has blamed the uptick in violence on capitalism and American culture, some argue that it is actually the socialist leader?s own rhetoric has made things worse. . . . .

Venezuela's Hugo Chávez seriously ill and facing more cancer treatment, rumor swirl about who might take his place

It is good to know that Venezuela will be in such good hands. From the Financial Times:

. . . Mr Chávez has prevented a successor from emerging and senior government figures insist there is “no Plan B”. Still, speculation about who might replace the leader has centred on bus driver turned foreign minister Nicolás Maduro; the vice-president and former student radical Elias Jaua; and one of Mr Chávez’s former military colleagues, Diosdado Cabello, who was beaten by Mr Capriles in the elections to Miranda state in 2008. . . .