I suggest you call Michele Bachman's office about health care, her solution is to have a tax deduction for health insurance so I asked how does this get any health care to people who earn too much to get government health care, but not enough to buy any? They said that it does not help anyone who does not have health insurance now. I inquired about how the lack of health care will affect the general population with the H1N1 virus if we have millions of people who can't go to the doctor or have any sick leave is there a plan for this? No reply so then I asked that if she wants to make a statement she should refuse to take government health care for her and her family and purchase health care from private insurance companies. They hung up...Margaret
This post is particularly aimed at Bachmann supporters in the Sixth Congressional District of Minnesota who regard her and themselves as "Christians."
This Sept. 2 CounterPunch link, excerpted.
By Rev. JIM RIGBY
Last week supporters of health-care reform gathered around the country, including in Austin, TX, where 2,000 people crowded into a downtown church to hear speakers talk about different aspects of the issue. Asked to speak about the ethical dimensions of health care, I tried to go beyond short-term political strategizing and ask more basic questions. This is an edited version of what I said.
Is anyone else here having trouble with the fact that we are even having this conversation? Is anyone else having trouble believing this topic is really controversial? I have been asked to talk about the ethical dimension of health care. Here’s one way to frame such a discussion:
If an infant is born to poor parents, would we be more ethical to give medicine to that child so he or she does not die prematurely of preventable diseases, or would we be more ethical if we let the child die screaming in his or her parent’s arms so we can keep more of our money?
Or, let’s say someone who worked for Enron, and now is penniless, contracted bone cancer. I’ve been asked to discuss whether we are more ethical if we provide such people medicine that lessens their pain. Or would we be more ethical to let them scream through the night in unbearable agony so we can pay lower taxes?
In effect, does selfishness trump good will? The item continues:
I can’t believe I am standing today in a Christian church defending the proposition that we should lessen the suffering of those who cannot afford health care in an economic system that often treats the poor as prey for the rich. I cannot believe there are Christians around this nation who are shouting that message down and waving guns in the air because they don’t want to hear it. But I learned a long time ago that churches are strange places; charity is fine, but speaking of justice is heresy in many churches. The late Brazilian bishop Dom Hélder Câmara said it well: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.” Too often today in the United States, if you talk about helping the poor, they call you Christian, but if you actually try to do something to help the poor, they call you a socialist.
[italics added, not in original]
Name calling, in this healthcare reform situation? In our US of A? No, not really, it's not true, is it? Please. Say it ain't so, Joe.
The article continues and concludes as it started, a bit preachy, but hard to dispute if the plane of discourse is about ethical fairness vs greed and demonization of others [I bet you've heard talk of those "illegal aliens," again, sucking out our healthcare bucks to heal their sickness and distress, bucks we could discretionarily be spending on ourselves and our pleasures and lusts, on video games, sporting event season tickets, a Lexus, a HDTV, drugs and prostitutes, personal firearms, or better braodband]:
Some of the other speakers today have been asked to address what is possible in the current political climate. I have been asked to speak of our dreams. Let me ask a question. How many of you get really excited about tweaking the insurance system so we just get robbed a little less? (silence) How many of you want universal health care? (sustained applause) I realize that insurance reform is all that’s on the table right now, and it can be important to choose the lesser of evils when that alone is within our power in the moment. But we also need to remember our dream. I believe the American dream is not about material success, not about being having the strongest military. The American dream is that every person might have a[n honest and not bogus rhetorical] right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It’s amazing to hear Christians who talk about the right to life as though it ends at birth. They believe every egg has a right to hatch, but as soon as you’re born, it’s dog eat dog. We may disagree on when life begins, but if the right to life means anything it means that every person (anyone who has finished the gestation period) has a right to life. And if there is a right to life there must be a right to the necessities of life. Like health care.
I believe the American dream was not about property rights, but human rights. [...]
Supporting universal health care does not make you socialist or even a liberal, it makes you a human being. And it makes you an ambassador for the American dream which, in the mind of Thomas Paine, was a dream for every human being, not just Americans. As we struggle to get health care to all people, we may have to settle for the lesser of two evils, but remember your dream -- the true American dream, a human dream. Whatever we win through reform is just first step toward a day when every human being has a[n honest and not bogus rhetorical] right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
What church do you reckon Steven J. Hemsley attends? What do you figure he gets out of attending? As a graduate of Fordham (B.A. 1974), I can guess the denomination. I wonder what he has to confess, how often he is at the confessional, what his view is of the ceremonial sharing of wafer and wine.
.......................
Well, I confess.
My feelings of charity and love of fellow humans, it has limits, and that's true whatever they call me; and in the context of the asymmetric suffering felt after Katrina, the context of name calling and hypocrisy, and the context of ways to be more fair to the less affluent public here and worldwide, I have a personal sense of justice and history some share (click to enlarge and read):
Add to the images, links, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Here, and here.
And George Carlin commentary, here.
Lest partisanship be suggested, here, here, here (global trends), here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
For the objection, it's all from one outlet - the picture of continuity you can count on vs. change you can believe in, that's not exactly a prime talking point in the mainstream media, or an integral part of deluding partisan right-wing screeds. Why would either of those camps, owned and run as they are, want to suggest a continuity between Clinton and his GATT and NAFTA, Bush, and now Obama? Owhership solidarity, as within the health-industrial complex. They belong to the club. We don't.
Enjoy. It's your nation, right or wrong. "When you're born you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in the United States, you're given a front row seat." Carlin again. Good luck and good health to all readers.
________UPDATE________
It may need to be pointed out for some readers, an ethics premised on secular humanism, without any magic or mythology underlying its premises, can fit the arguments quoted as written by the pastor. Treating others as we would hope others would treat us need not be grounded on any particular religious belief system, to be an axiom within one's ethical belief system.
From that point of view it is not at all improper to ask those professing to hold to a Christian belief system, what notions of ethics should attach for their behavior and values as true believers, devoid of hypocrisy, and how should that general belief system govern and affect points of view about what healthcare in this nation should be provided the public.
Ones adhering to an ethics of "I've got mine now you get yours" might disagree with me and the pastor's item I quote, and I have beliefs about such folks, see first image, above.
________FURTHER UPDATE_______
Someone asked, who is this Rigby? This is from the end of the item:
Rev. Jim Rigby is pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin. He can be reached at jrigby0000@aol.com.