Reforming Healthcare Reform

I have expressed my opinion on so-called healthcare reform numerous times since I began filling this space in 2009. Now that the Republicans have re-taken Congress and the White House, talk of repealing Obama’s signature achievement has become headline news again. In this atmosphere of true hope for positive change, there are still mountains of misunderstanding and deep canyons of faulty assumptions littering both sides of the debate.

Someone shared a picture on Facebook recently that asked if we could afford $2 billion for an election, why could we not afford “free” healthcare. This kind of mindless misrepresentation is rampant. First of all, there is no logical connection between the money spent on the regular operation of our election system and healthcare. More to the point, we spent $3.2 TRILLION on healthcare in 2015. Against that three thousand billion someone wished compare two billion.

Beyond the obvious lack of fiscal and mathematical understanding evident in the Facebook picture, there is a more serious problem with any argument that champions “free” healthcare. Ignoring the fact that healthcare provided by the government is not “free,” for someone must obviously pay for it, there is a weightier issue: there is no basis in the US Constitution for nationalized healthcare. All those who lobby for any type of government mandated healthcare operate on the false assumption that healthcare is a human right. It is not.

I have heard some try to lodge the right to healthcare under the “pursuit of life, liberty and happiness” listed in the Declaration of Independence as “unalienable rights” guaranteed by the Creator. There is great irony here given that many who propose this argument deny the existence of a Creator, but that is immaterial. Since the Declaration predates health insurance by 150 years, it is doubtful that the framers had such a “right” in mind at the time. If one argues for a dynamic interpretation of our Founding Fathers’ words, it remains highly illogical and impractical to suppose they can apply to “free” healthcare.  Taking this approach would demand that food and shelter also be provided for “free,” since they too are necessary to life, etc.

Nationalizing (and hence paying for) healthcare is a socialist wealth re-distribution plan and nothing more. As I said in my Open Letter to Debbie Stabenow back in 2009, any plan that, “requires the robbing of citizen Peter to pay citizen Paul's medical bills” is unconstitutional and generally unsupported by a majority of Americans. The election of Donald Trump (and many other Republicans) this cycle suggests that people are still opposed to nationalized healthcare. Trump and many congressional candidates who won election made repealing Obamacare a top priority. I will be a job well-done if they can accomplish it.

What these repeal-minded people should not do is replace Obamacare with another socialist scheme. If they can conjure a way to make the healthcare industry a truly free marketplace and remove the hobbling government restrictions on insurance companies, I believe real reform will happen. If insurance is made portable and not bound to state borders; if hospitals and doctors begin to charge what it costs instead of charging what insurance will pay; and most important, if consumers are free to shop for healthcare, competition will drive prices down.

There will still be some who cannot afford healthcare. For them there is Medicare and Medicaid, each of which needs vast restructuring to eliminate fraud and abuse, but each of which can serve the less fortunate without massive wealth redistribution if we insist on some type of government welfare. For Christians, there is also charity, which for almost two thousand years was the only option for healthcare. Clinics and doctors planted in depressed areas and supported by churches could take much of the weight off the clumsy Federal welfare system. It is, after all, a Christian duty to care for the needs of one’s neighbor. If we did that properly, government healthcare would be all but unnecessary.

The Valley of the Shadow

My wife and I spent a nearly sleepless night last night. After a trip to the Social Security web site revealed that her retirement benefit award letter was still not available, we called the SSA 800 number for an explanation. A very cold and unsympathetic voice told us that she could not find an application for retirement benefits on her system. On the date which we believed we applied, her records showed an application for disability benefits. She recommended that we make application for retirement benefits (anew).

The situation was baffling because we had already been denied disability benefits (more on that later), and we were filing for standard retirement benefits. We both had clear memories of doing the application online back in October. Stranger still, we spoke by phone with someone at SSA in December because the award letter was not showing up. That SSA employee said that the application was in process and the first benefit check would be issued in January covering November and December.

This morning we bundled ourselves downtown to the SSA office here. At first, Sue, the agent we spoke to, repeated what the agent on the phone had said yesterday. Then she wrinkled her forehead as she peered at her computer monitor; the retirement application suddenly "appeared." She was unable to determine where it had come from or why it was not immediately visible, but the dates and other information confirmed that it was the online form we filed in October. Sue was able to reactivate it and arrange for the January benefit as we had been previously promised. Thank you, Sue.

This story is not presented merely to elicit sympathy. As any regular reader will suspect, there is a point. As retirees with very little savings and minimal pension income, my wife and I will be relying (too) heavily on the good graces of the federal government for the rest of our earthly lives. We are in this unfortunate situation because of many poor choices made throughout the years of our life together. No excuses; it is my fault we are not prepared as we should be. If you are younger than I, take heed.

The other lesson I draw from this has to do with the efficiency of government in general. Much to our relief, the snafu in our records was corrected rather easily; only one night of lost sleep resulted. It could have been much worse. My wife's disability claim is an example; it was denied as virtually all first-time claims are, requiring a lawyer and a lengthy appeal process to proceed further. I am told the SSA routinely denies all first time claims because a fair number of claimants never appeal. Our lawyer has warned us that the appeal we are filing may take up to two years to be adjudicated. Fortunately, we have retirement benefits to collect in the interim; a younger person would not have this option. 

This vignette may be a preview of what we all have in store with national health care. The massive problems that occurred at the roll-out of Obamacare are not going to be unique. Experience suggests that they will be the norm. I am not thrilled at the prospect of my health care being in the hands of a government that can lose a simple online application. Come to think of it, in a couple more years, I will have government health care anyway: Medicare. Oh dear.

Yet even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of government care, I will not fear. It was wrong for my wife and me to be distressed last night. Our trust is not in the federal government; not ultimately. It is so easy to get caught up in the cares of this world, as if they were all that mattered. When you experience the inefficiency of government in a personal, frightening way, it is good to remember that a sovereign God reigns over even that mess. Now that I have my peace back, I think I will take a nap.

Irony Wears a Gown

Life is full of irony. I dislike people who overuse hospitalization insurance with petty maladies. I dislike hospitals in general. I dislike the situation which forces medical professionals to overuse tests because of the fear of litigation. I dislike the character, Dr. House, played by Hugh Laurie on television.

If you have never seen the TV show House you may not understand the irony of the situation I am about to relate. I just returned from the hospital after experiencing what felt like the filming of the next episode. My wife drove me to the emergency room last night at about 9 p.m. because the flinching caused by the pain in my upper back made her uncomfortable. Macho me would have stayed home to see if it got any worse. I deferred.

The only way I can describe what I experienced is to say it was like a knife was repeatedly thrust just below my scapula, drawing my attention away from sensation of pressure about my rib cage. Stop. I know the pressure sign re. heart attack. There was also a strange all-over quivering like the shakes from a fever, but my temp was 97.7. My heart rate was hovering around 90, which is moderately high for me. Finally, the back pain had begun two days earlier in very moderate form.

You should know, dear reader and fellow armchair diagnostician, that I have a history of localizing intense stress in my gastro intestinal system. Almost thirty years ago I raced to the emergency room late one night to learn that my heart attack symptoms were a “near ulcer.” Since that episode, I have had a dozen or more recurrences. Some fewer years ago, I experienced several losses of consciousness due allegedly to intense pain in the iliac region. I had several of these “white-out” experiences over the course of a couple years.

Returning to last night, I apparently frightened the ER staff in the same manner as my wife. They strapped me to an EKG, gave me nitro-glycerin, morphine, aspirin, Tylenol, an intravenous acid reducer and probably other things I have forgotten. I received a CAT scan and delivered numerous vials of blood to the lab for testing. Naturally I was connected to a machine which monitored my heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, blood oxygen level and which screamed a warning every time I relaxed enough to fall into my frequent resting apnea behavior.

The ER attending physician determined that I should be admitted for further tests, so he passed me to the on-call internist who peppered me with 20x100 questions. You know the list: have you ever had cancer, diabetes, stroke, heart problems, surgeries, or fallen over Niagara in a barrel. I may have failed to mention that I frequently lose consciousness and sometimes writhe with gastric pain for hours on end. But she did not ask about that. She was concerned that I rode my bicycle eight miles around Bear Lake last Saturday, four days before the onset of my mysterious presenting pain.

By 2 a.m. her best guess was something muscular-skeletal, but she insisted that I be admitted for a stress test. If I passed that and a series of blood enzyme tests, I was told I could leave the hospital. I have always been pretty good at tests, so I sailed through everything they threw at me. By noon I was thoroughly exhausted from twenty-eight hours of being mostly awake and more than tired of frequent pokes, pills and blood pressure tests, and I was eager to break my mandated fast, now approaching sixteen hours.

If you are still reading this, you must be bored; I know I was by this point in the adventure. Thank goodness they had cable in the little TV that swung on an articulated arm over my automatic pressure adjusting air mattress equipped hospital bed. They also had earphones to give the other patient in the room so his blaringly mindless wee hours TV could be muted. By 11 a.m. they had run out of things to test, so I was told I could leave as soon as the doctor read the results of my second set of “pictures” post stress test. By 2:30 I was finally wheeled to the door where my wife retraced our steps from last night.

I haven’t seen the bill for my nineteen hour stay, but if it does not reach five figures, I will be surprised. I am thankful for my wife’s hospitalization insurance in a more tangible way than I was yesterday. Ironically, all that money has not bought an answer to what caused my pain. Ironically I am still of the opinion that hospitalization insurance is a luxury item only the rich are entitled to. I also believe firmly that when the Lord calls you home, the Blue Cross is not the one you should be counting on.

As I write this I am feeling about the same level of pain as I was thirty-six hours ago. I left the hospital without telling them it had returned. If it intensifies, I will roll over and wait for it to pass if my wife will let me. Or not. There may be additional irony in this situation for those of you who think I bear a strong physical resemblance to Laurie/House and an even stronger character likeness. Or not.

It's Not Fair

I upset a student the other day; she accused me of being unfair. I agreed with her. I tried to make it one of those teachable moments by pointing out that quite often life is not fair, so she should learn to deal with it. She was not impressed with my pedagogical technique. As she left the room angrily, I asked her to please make an appointment with my dean so we three could work something out.

I do not commonly have students leave my presence in such a disturbed state, but I am very familiar with the attitude that life owes everyone a fair shake. When someone complains about the lack of fairness in a situation I usually respond that life is not fair. It is not fair that a family is expecting a fatally deformed child which will die almost as soon as it is born. It is not fair that six people were shot dead in Tucson recently. It is not fair that thousands of children are missing a parent who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is not fair that millions of Americans are out of work because of an economic bubble that burst. (Was that Chinese eco-terrorism?)

There are countless examples of life’s unfairness. What irks me is the people who want to gain some benefit from achieving what they call fairness. Megan Kelly had a guest on her Fox News program this afternoon who decried the unfairness of our current income tax system. She said, naively, that if only the top one percent of people – the really rich people – would pay their fair share our economic woes would be over. First of all, she is just misinformed (or she is misrepresenting.) The last time I saw the figures, the richest five percent of taxpayers pay over fifty percent of all taxes. The poorest forty percent pay almost no taxes at all. If there is unfairness here, it is that the rich pay such a disproportionately large amount.

Regardless of her complete misrepresentation of the facts, it remains a fact that she believes rich people owe the rest of us something; she believes in the redistribution of wealth. She is not alone; most of the progressive Democrat politicians in the US believe in redistribution. President Obama said during his campaign for office that he does. What is national health care but a plan to make people who have money pay for the medical costs of those who cannot afford it. The thinking is that it is not fair that some people can afford insurance and some cannot, or that some can afford medical care and some cannot.

Either way, the underlying assumption is that everyone is owed medical care as a right. I have argued against that in this space before. All I will say about it now is that I cannot find health care anywhere in the US Constitution. Nor can I find unemployment benefits, or low cost housing, or food stamps or farm subsidies or corporate welfare or any of the hundreds of other government redistribution programs with which we are saddled. The fact is our founding fathers would be aghast at what the federal government is undertaking, this vast wealth redistribution scheme.

Read William Bradford if you dare. He describes an attempt by the early settlers in Plymouth to function as a wealth equalized system, otherwise known as socialism or communism. The community almost starved to death before they converted to a capitalistic system where individual effort was rewarded proportionately. “If a man will not work, let him not eat,” sounds cruel, but those words were spoken by the Apostle Paul to believers.

From the Genesis creation mandate to “dress, till and keep the earth,” down through the so-called Protestant work ethic, Christianity preaches one message. It also tells us that there will always be poor among us. Poor is a relative term implying that others will be rich. It is a fact of life – an unfair fact to be sure. But where is it written that life will be fair? Our founders declared that all men had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We are not being true to either the Scripture or the Constitution when we try to say all men have the right to equal outcomes – equal opportunities yes – equal outcomes no.

The Curtain, Please

I sometimes wonder if I am becoming paranoid in my old age. Then a voice says, "It's not paranoia if you really are being targeted." Maybe it isn't paranoia, but just cynicism. The point is that I am starting to look for ulterior motives in everything. It's possible that I have begun to see my own heart clearly, and I realize that there are no truly pure motives there either. But enough psychobabble; here is the topic for today. When something doesn't make sense, look for hidden reasons.

Case number one: the group formerly known as the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) was loudly championing Obama's health care reform efforts. This made no sense to me since there was so much for senior citizens not to like about the Democrats' plan. Reduced services, increased premium costs, death panels (so-called,) and more elements made the reform bill onerous to most savvy seniors. I know that AARP lobbying usually tracks with the Democrat issues and candidates, but this one seemed too contrary to the stated purpose of the organization.

In a World Net Daily article , Chelsea Schilling pulls back the curtain and reveals the wizard behind all the smoke and mirrors. According to Schilling's investigation, AARP collected $249 million in membership dues last year (2008.) In that same period, the organization received $773 million from royalties and advertising associated with the "Medigap" insurance policies it recommends to its members. In other words, over seventy percent of their 2008 revenue came from insurance companies. Confused? Aren't insurance companies at odds with Obama over health care reform? Maybe, but when the dust settles, insurance companies will be charging even more for their "Medigap" products because of the way the reform bill is structured. Higher premiums means more royalty dollars to AARP. Make sense now?

(Time out for a brief testimonial: I have discovered an alternative to AARP which seems to be more to my liking. Check it out at www.amac.us if you are interested.)

The way the Democrats abandoned the democratic process to push health care down the throats of their constituents also puzzles me. I used to think, in a mildly cynical way, that all any politician cared about was getting re-elected. One of the most amazing aspects of the health care reform debacle we just witnessed was the way Nance Pelosi strong-armed reluctant members of her party to vote for the bill even though it was political suicide. An LA Times article details the incredible position shifts that were forced upon the Speaker's own principles (if that word applies) and those of her colleagues. No constituency, no cause was safe from "Mean Machine 1," as her late night battle jersey named her.

Unfortunately I can not take you to the Emerald City and pull back the curtain on this one. I have a suspicion about what forces pull the levers in Washington these days, but no real proof. Either through naivete or giant hubris, Barak Obama has chosen to step out from behind the curtain just enough to expose at least the tip of the ideological iceberg that is floating down the Potomac. I must quickly admit that the impending disaster didn't begin when Obama took office. Sadly, George W. Bush was letting some bergy bits bang into the hull of the ship of state before he left (think bailouts and stimulus.)

So in my metaphor, Obama and his merry crew of socialists are sailing purposely into the path of the enormous growler. (Yes, Virginia, they are socialists -- and communists; read the resumes of those the president has gathered to himself.) They have taken over the US auto industry and health care. Steel, coal and petroleum were long ago hobbled by government meddling; a quick survey of recent history reveals several overt statements by Democrat leaders indicating a desire to "nationalize" these industries. Even agribusiness is becoming a government run sideshow with all the ill conceived subsidies and ridiculous mandates (ie. ethanol.)

I may be too trusting, too optimistic, but I hope that Michigan candidates like Bill Cooper and Pete Hoekstra can get elected and become a counterbalance to the leftward swing we are seeing. I hear hopeful honesty in national voices like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Bobby Jindal, Tom Tancredo and many others. I hope there are enough people dissatisfied with the wizard who has been revealed to vote him back to Kansas (or Illinois.) I trust my Oz metaphor is near to the truth. I sometimes think, however, that this is more like Alice's tumble down a rabbit hole. If we have descended into absurdity, there is no hope.

Cosmic Con

Barak Obama is sitting down with a bi-partisan group of lawmakers today to discuss health care reform. It is probably just coincidence that his first attempt to bring the two parties together happened after his gang lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. After all, candidate Obama insisted he was willing to listen to good ideas from all sides of the issues. I'm sure his previous attitude of "my way or the highway" was only due to the lack of good ideas from his loyal opposition.

Things have certainly changed in Washington since Obama's poll numbers started to slide. The loss of Ted Kennedy's senate seat to the Republicans really accelerated the mood swing. The change has been on the wind for several weeks, as I noted in this space back in January. Now it is beginning to look like a floodgate has been opened. Democrats everywhere are starting to duck and run from association with their dear leader, Evan Bayh being a recent startling addition to the deserters.

Barak Obama and the Democrats (for the most part) still believe they deserve absolute power in Washington. He and his partisans remind us constantly of the mandate they received in 2008. This claim rings a bit phony; as I remember, only forty-something percent of the electorate voted for "change." Still, all we hear from the sultans of change is how out of step the opposition is with the sentiment in the country. Even the eruptions of the town hall meetings last summer didn't convince them. The protesters were a small minority, they claimed, stirred up by partisan Republican forces.

The faulty assumption here is that they think they can get what they deserve. We humans are conditioned to think that way in modern society. Get a college degree; get a good job; get a lot of money. Get elected; get a mandate; get an agenda rolling. I am not sure the serfs in feudal Europe would have seen this correlation, nor would the common laborers in the pre-union days of the industrial revolution. The nobles and owners probably did though, droit de Signor and all that.

The real issue underlying the health care debate is, in fact, determining what Americans deserve with regard to their medical care. Completely absent from the current discussion is a voice proclaiming that access to everything medical science has to offer is not a human right. I made that point in an letter to Congresswoman Debbie Stabenow last year, but she did not respond. Much to my dismay, none of the conservative legislators I have heard speaking on the subject bring this up either. They seem to be granting the assumption that health care is a right.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; the concept of entitlement is not something new in human history. That mindset is precisely what the Serpent said to Eve in the Garden: "God is not being fair. You deserve to know what He is keeping from you; you're entitled to eat from the forbidden tree." The downside of our remarkable prosperity in the West is that we come to think we are entitled to limitless prosperity as individuals. The cosmic con artist is still at work duping the human race. I really shouldn't blame President Obama for simply trying to give us what we think we deserve.

Make Me Be Good

I always know that God is teaching me something when He layers the lessons from multiple sources in my life. A month ago I decided to re-read Francis Schaeffer's He is There and He is not Silent. Not coincidentally (with God there are no coincidences) I was recently asked to teach a lesson capsulizing the Christian world-view. Who better to reference than Schaeffer? Then my devotional reading (two additional re-reads) in Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew and Stephen James' Sailing Between the Stars each brought fresh insights to the table as well.

Schaeffer says that the Christian world-view offers the only rational explanation of why there is such moral confusion in the world: this condition is abnormal. The report of the fall from grace in Genesis three is not just a morality play; it is the basis for everything that has gone wrong since. Trying to make sense of the human condition without understanding how we got here is like explaining email without reference to the Internet.

We are moral creatures; this is a moral universe; the Creator made it that way. But we are, as G. K. Chesterton says, "broken gods," or in Blaise Pascal's formulation: "fallen princes." We know intuitively that some things are right and some things are wrong; we often wish to right those wrongs which appall us particularly. But as one dear soul recently complained, how do we know who to help when we are bombarded by needs every day?

When Philip Yancey was visiting Russia in 1991 after the fall of communism, an editor of Pravda, once an atheistic mouthpiece, ironically complained, "We don't know how to motivate people to show compassion.... How do you reform and motivate people? How do you get them to be good?" Yancey's reply: "Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up."

Which leads me to the political situation we find ourselves in regarding health care reform. Universal health care stands as a symbol for the human desire to rage against the effects of the fall. Physical sickness plays as a metaphor for the metaphysical disease that plagues the whole world system. Most conservative politicians understand this no better than their progressive counterparts. Conservatives have allowed the premise to be assumed that health care is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. The whole gang in Washington D.C. is trying to negate the consequences of the fall through legislation. They are trying to get us to be good, as the Russian editor put it.

Study the history of health care, hospitals in particular, and you will find that for millennia the care of diseased or injured persons was thought to be a responsibility of religion. The Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. urged Christians to build hospitals in every cathedral city. Well into the nineteenth century virtually all health care in the west was either provided by non-profit religious institutions or paid for by the recipients. The growth of the insurance industry in the last century finally made health care profitable, shifting the burden away from the church. Shared risk allowed people to bear the costs health care without relying on charity.

But insurance used to be optional; those who could afford it bought protection. The debate in Washington now seems to assume that either health care itself, or at least the insurance to pay for care is a human right. Some proponents of universal health care equate their opponents with those who stood against civil rights in the last century. But is the right to vote or work or live where one chooses on the same plane as the right to a free tonsillectomy? Or free birth control or free Viagra?

I am not unmoved by the plight of those who have need of physical care they can not afford. I am unmoved by the argument that the government has the right to force me to pay those unmet costs. (See my "Open Letter to Debbie Stabenow.") Helping those in need is good; forcing people to be good is not. Call me Pollyanna, but I believe that if the health insurance industry and its related costs went away today, there would be enough charity in the hearts of men to care for everyone who truly needed care, but could not afford to pay for it. That would be the Christian way; but as President Obama recently opined, we are not a Christian nation anymore.

Michigan Healthcare Reform

The Michigan Education Association was getting all heated up last summer over a proposal by Michigan House Speaker Andy Dillon that would universalize public employees' health care. Mary Christian, MEA-Retired president was encouraging members to contact their state legislators to "express concern over such a drastic change in our current health plan." What was the drastic change? Dillon proposed placing teachers under the same insurance as other state employees.

The irony here is that the MEA is generally sold out completely to whatever the Democrats propose. Chuck Agerstrand, an MEA retirement consultant said in the same retirement report, "NEA supports health insurance reform that helps to guarantee that every person in America has quality, affordable heath care coverage." This is a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is writing, or else it is a blatant example of the double standard so often evident in progressive politics.

It sounds depressingly similar to the US Congress insisting on universal health care, but exempting themselves from the provisions of the bill they are ramming down Americans' throats. The teachers' union is all for universal health care as long as it doesn't involve giving up the benefits to which they have grown accustomed. Mary Christian's stated concern was, "State control over the health plan of public workers would strip local school districts...and their respective employees of the ability to make the right decisions regarding what is best for them." That sounds like precisely what the opponents of universal health care fear.

I wrote my opinion of universal health care in January. The short version of what I said then is that health care and the insurance which limits exposure by sharing the risk with our neighbors is an optional accessory to life. No one has an absolute right to a certain level of medical care. Were that the case, one must ask where such rights would end. If medical care is a right, then surely nutrition is as well; we should provide food for all our citizens. If nutrition is a right, then surely shelter is as well; we should provide housing for all our citizens. Since mobility is required to function in our sprawling communities, transportation of some sort should be provided for all our citizens.

But wait; haven't I just described the Great Society? Hasn't the progressive/liberal agenda been attempting to provide all such "rights" for half a century or more? And at what cost? The federal budget deficit now looms over our children and grand children so heavily that their prosperity is clearly doomed. The entitlement programs we have come to think of as standard equipment in life are sooner rather than later going to implode from their own weight. If California is any example of what liberal policies lead to, prepare for bankruptcy at all levels of government.

As I said in January, I am not deaf to the needs of the less fortunate; there but for the grace of God go I. What we often misunderstand is that the same Scripture which teaches us to care for the needy and infirm also says, "If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat." The MEA like most unions, like most of the progressive politicians wants a world where their version of equality is enforced by law. While the idea may sound good, even noble, it has been tried repeatedly throughout history and it never works. Socialism always fails because the sin that infects every human heart passes its contagion into the system rendering it useless to combat the very ills it seeks to address.

We don't need universal health care; we need universal soul care. We need a revival of the spirit which says, "I love my neighbor as myself." Jesus' words about the poor and needy were poignant, even harsh: "You always have the poor with you." Though He doubtless had the power, even the Son of God did not eradicate poverty or disease when He was walking the dusty roads of Palestine. The miraculous healings and feedings He did were merely tokens of what the true and final Kingdom of God will look like. Until that kingdom comes in its fullness, we need to do what Jesus recommended: we need to care for the wounded travelers who fall beside our own Jericho roads.

Open Letter to Debbie Stabenow

Dear Senator Stabenow,

The real difference between your opinion and mine is summarized in the first sentence of your second paragraph: "I believe that health care is a right not a privilege." It is contradictory and inflammatory to propose as a right something which comes at the expense of another's right. If I say to a fellow citizen, "I have the right to end your life," he would surely disagree with me, and I suspect, so would you. My rights end where they impinge on my fellow citizen's rights. Yet you (and your like-minded political peers) think nothing of infringing on my rights to liberty, privacy, property and more by insisting that I pay for my fellow citizens' health care. They do not have the right to ask me to pay for their medical costs any more than I have the right to ask them to pay my mortgage. It does not fundamentally alter the situation if you make the request from the seat of power granted to you by the people.

The "political will" you reference as a justification for your actions is evidently not the will of the people, rather it is the will of a select group (mainly politicians) who desire to remake society after an image not supported by this country's founding documents. The uproar you have been hearing in the last few weeks clearly indicates that the will of the polis (the people,) the true "political will" is not in favor of nationalizing, socializing, government option-izing our health care system. If you wish to do your job properly, you will act as a representative of all the people of Michigan and withdraw your support for any health care reform that requires the robbing of citizen Peter to pay citizen Paul's medical bills. Do that, and I firmly believe you would become an overnight national celebrity, and perhaps stand a chance to be re-elected. Fail to do that, and you may ride out of Washington on wave of voter discontent akin to 1994, only this one may be more like a tsunami.

Sincerely,

Clair H. Verway