Response to "The Moral Imperative of Health Care Reform"

Dear Mindy:
I appreciate your persistence in pursuing a (biblical) understanding of the raging health care debate. There ARE some pretty strident voices on both sides of the debate. Professor Gushee provides his share of them. His article has for me, hand grenades in every paragraph. For example, his statement, "whether we can simultaneously love a neighbor and not care if they die from a treatable disease because they cannot pay for it", is an example of a monstrous accusation against perhaps the most compassionate nation on earth right now, and the people giving of time and money sacrificially to help the poor in many ways, including free clinics. No one in our country is turned away from health care because they cannot pay for it.

For starters, the title of his article, "The Moral Imperative of Health Care Reform", is not what his piece is about. Health care reform is one thing, but Universal health care, aka socialized medicine, which is clearly what he is advocating, is entirely another. I happen to be in favor of health care reform, as are the vast majority of Americans. We all know that the system needs work. I and about 75% of my countrymen are not in favor of socialized medicine however. Now I know that those statistics don't matter to you right now. You want to know what the biblical imperitives are, and that is good. That is always where to start.

1)Here is a quote from Adrian Rogers, 3x past president of the SBC and one of the most anointed bible teachers of our time:
"You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they did not work for, that my dear friends is the beginning of the end of any nation."

Dr. Rogers is using the principle in Exodus 20:17, the tenth Commandment about not coveting ANYTHING that is our neighbors'. In order to provide socialized medicine, that would happen thousands of times per day. That would be an affront to God.

2) One of the things that need to be cleaned up is the overheated tort system in our country that grossly adds to our health costs. Physicians routinely pay liability premiums of over $200,000 per year just to be covered from lawsuits! We can blame it on the lawyers, and usually do, but someone has to do the suing. I personally know many believers who have done that. I believe that is an affront to God. Neither the writers of HR 3200 nor the professor addresses that.

3) The ethics prof pretty smoothly goes from a "theology of human rights that includes bodily rights, which includes a right to health care", (paid for by someone else) I'm frankly lost on that one. Where does scripture speak to a right to health care. He also speaks about the "unjust maldistribution of health care in this country as a huge national scandal." Those words "unjust maldistribution" are code words for socialism. No peoples anywhere have been lifted up by mandated equal distribution of resources.

4) All right, let's address the compassion issue. We are exhorted by the professor that there is "the moral imperitive to extend adequate health care to all of our nation's people." No there isn't, at least by the government. That is not a hard hearted response. It is none of the government's business to provide health care. It is up to the church, the individuals, and a system that allows for an adequate compensation AND PROFIT for the care it provides. Only then will better ways be researched and found to treat people. Only then will physicians have the freedom to treat people in the best way and for the patients whole life without a public agency deciding it for him. And the poor will be the beneficiaries of that better treatment. Having the government make the allocations of treatments is the least compassionate way imaginable, esp for the poor.

5) Even our Lord observed that we will always have the poor with us. That is not fatalistic. It's just the way it is. The best possible way to improve health care for all is to regulate tort law, regulate the way insurance companies make their payments, and by all means, not force America's companies to pay an onerous tax on top of the health care premiums we already pay.

6) And one last thing. We don't have the money to do it. And to do it anyway would be an affront to God. "Owe no man anything".

The professor is right that there are for sure broader moral issues at stake. Unfortunately, conservative Christians like me are painted with the "no compassion" brush. I reject that because I believe the better and sometimes harder way is not simply to hand out someone elses money to "solve" a problem. Destroying a free enterprise system that, under God, has created the most prosperous nation on earth, would be a gross misservice to the poor. Our level of prosperity has lifted everyones boat, unless a decision is made to get out of it. That's an individual decision. May the Lord give us all wisdom in these days.
Love,
Dad