Health Care: But Wait! There’s more.

About two hours ago, I cited articles which indicated that the health care bill would likely pass since the president promised pro-life Democrats an executive order confirming that the federal government would not fund abortions.  Now the GOP may have found a way to convince those Democrats to vote the bill back into committee, which would effectively kill it:

Democrats are worried about holding their members together on a GOP motion that could kill the healthcare bill.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said House leaders are specifically concerned about a Republican motion to recommit that would contain only language on abortion that Stupak originally had wanted to include in the Senate bill.

The concern is based on the fear of GOP attack ads painting Democrats who vote against a motion to recommit that includes Stupak’s favored language on abortion as “flip-floppers” on the issue.

Politics and its trickery are so much fun, no?  As the balance continues to swing back and forth on this, here (courtesy of the LewRockwell.com blog) is a ridiculously long list of government health care horror stories:

• Kidney cancer patients denied life-saving drugs by NHS rationing body NICE
  – April 29, 2009 [Daily Mail (UK)] 
• Girl, 3, has heart operation cancelled three times because of bed shortage
  – David Rose, April 23, 2009 [Times Online] 
• Number of children going to hospital to have teeth pulled soars by 66% since 1997
  – Daniel Martin and Cher Thornhill, April 12, 2009 [Daily Mail (UK)] 
• NHS ‘failings’ over elderly falls
  – March 25, 2009 [BBC] 
• Learning disabled ‘failed by NHS’
  – Nick Triggle, March 24, 2009 [BBC] 
• Cancer survivor confronts the health secretary on 62-day wait
  – Lyndsay Moss, March 21, 2009 [The Scotsman] 
• Culture of targets prevents nurses from tending to patients
  – Claire Rayner, President of the Patients Association, March 21, 2009 [Telegraph UK] 
• Children being failed by health system, says head of watchdog
  – Sarah Boseley, March 21, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] 
• Our cancer shame: Survival rates still lag behind EU despite spending billions
  – Jenny Hope, March 20, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] 
• Failing hospital ’caused deaths’
  – March 17, 2009 [BBC] 
• Health gap drive ‘wasted money’
  – Nick Triggle, March 14, 2009 [BBC] 
• Longer GP opening hours branded wasteful ‘PR exercise’ by doctors
  – Lyndsay Moss, March 13, 2009 [The Scotsman] 
• “Political meddling” threatens general practice, warns GP leader
  – March 13, 2009 [Management in Practice (UK)] 
• Children at risk through lack of training for doctors and nurses, report warns
  – Rebecca Smith, March 13, 2009 [Telegraph UK] 
• Chocolate should be taxed to control obesity epidemic, doctors are told
  – Simon Johnson, March 13, 2009 [Telegraph UK] 
• 1,000 villagers wait for a dentist after just one NHS practice opens
  – March 10, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] 
• Study that proves the folly of NHS Alzheimer’s drug ban
  – Jenny Hope, March 7, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] 
• NHS charges to rise in England
  – March 5, 2009 [BBC] 
• Disabled children wait up to two years for wheelchairs
  – March 4, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] 
• NHS under fire over waiting times
  – February 25, 2009 [The Scotsman] 
• Government procrastination blamed for HIV-contaminated blood tragedy
  – February 23, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] 
• Specialist nurses ‘vastly overworked’
  – February 20, 2009 [Harwich & Manningtree Standard] 
• Hundreds of operations cancelled at Lothian hospitals
  – Adam Morris, February 19, 2009 [The Scotsman] 
• Stop asking for antibiotics to cure coughs and colds, Government tells patients
  – Daniel Martin, February 17, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] 
• Stroke services are ‘UK’s worst’
  – February 17, 2009 [BBC] 
• Hospitals curb caesarean births
  – Sarah-Kate Templeton, February 15, 2009 [The Times] 
• Only five out of 51 hospital trusts pass hygiene test, say inspectors
  – Sarah Boseley, November 24, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] 
• Top doctors slam NHS drug rationing
  – Sarah-Kate Templeton, August 24, 2008 [The Times] 
• Heart patients dying due to poor hospital care, says report
  – Sarah Boseley, June 8, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] 
• NHS dentistry loses almost a million patients after new dentists’ contract
  – David Rose, June 6, 2008 [The Times] 
• Private healthcare managers could be sent to turn round failing NHS hospitals
  – Philip Webster, Political Editor, and David Rose, June 4, 2008 [The Times] 
• Cancer patients ‘betrayed’ by NHS
  – Sarah-Kate Templeton, June 1, 2008 [The Times] 
• NHS scandal: dying cancer victim was forced to pay
  – Sarah-Kate Templeton, June 1, 2008 [The Times] 
• Pensioner, 76, forced to pull out own teeth after 12 NHS dentists refuse to treat her
  – Olinka Koster, March 26, 2008 [Daily Mail(UK)] 
• Dental patients face care lottery
  – March 26, 2008 [Metro(UK)] 
• Lung patients ‘condemned to death as NHS withdraws their too expensive drugs’
  – Jenny Hope, March 24, 2008 [Daily Mail(UK)] 
• Women in labour turned away by maternity units
  – John Carvel, March 21, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] 
• Health inequality has got worse under Labour, says government report
  – Andrew Sparrow, March 13, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited]

Find the full list of tales of socialized medicine woes here — what I posted just scratches the surface.