For folks increasingly leery of President Obama’s plan to radically overhaul America’s health-care system, or 17 percent of the nation’s economy, all this could hardly have come at a better time — that is, fiscal troubles aplenty within Repubican Mitt Romney’s brainchild, Massachusetts’ “grand experiment” in “universal” health care.

Initiated on Mr. Romney’s gubernatorial watch in 2006, this “experiment” has fallen on hard times, and predictably so. Even though the Bay State commenced its program with a far smaller percentage of uninsured residents than exists nationwide, “RomneyCare” is threatening to bankrupt the state. Budgeted for Fiscal Year 2010 at $880 million, or 7.3 percent more than a year ago, this plan, aimed at providing low- or no-cost health coverage to roughly 165,000 residents, has caused Massachusetts’ overall expenditures on all health-related programs to jump an astounding 42 percent since 2006.

So what does Mr. Romney’s successor, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, propose as a remedy for these skyrocketing costs? Well, whaddya think? The standard litany of prescriptions (no pun intended) — price controls and spending caps, for a start, and then, again predictably, waiting periods and limitations on coverage. As in Europe and Canada, so too in Massachusetts. And, we feel certain, everyone from Mr. Romney to Mr. Patrick said, “It would never happen here.” But then, such things are inevitable when best-laid plans, with all their monstrous costs, run smack-dab into fiscal reality.

After dabbling in other ways to try to somehow balance the ledgers — including that old standby, increasing the cigarette tax — Mr. Patrick impaneled a blue-ribbon commission to determine how this “grand experiment” might be saved. Again, some hardy perennials were trotted out, such as placing heightened emphasis on preventative care — not a bad idea, but hardly a cost-cutting measure. The commission has also wandered down a thoroughfare whose road signs should make one and all in the Bay State — and America as a whole — cringe. One proposed alternative would “exclude coverage of services of low priority/low value.” Another talks of limiting “coverage to services that produce the highest value when considering both clinical effectiveness and cost.”

Alrighty then, let’s examine what this portends. Not only rationing, but, as we see it, a one-size-(or one-procedure)-fits-all type of approach to medicine in which individual needs of individual patients are rendered subordinate to the cost-effective bottom line. Is that any way to treat, as in medically “treat,” people?

And, precisely, tell us this: Who will be making such determinations as to “low priority/low value”? You can darned well be sure it won’t be patients and doctors, but rather bureaucrats, bean-counters, and pencil-pushers.

Massachusetts residents assigned to this plan are getting a raw deal. Not only will they increasingly receive medical-care-by-the-numbers, but they will also have little power or recourse to make changes in what they or their doctors deem their best medical interest.

What a shabby approach to such a critical human need. Is this what we want to see instituted the nation over? If not, we admonish you to make your collective voice heard — and quickly.