@katiecouric: Mike Huckabee
November 24, 2009 10:20 AM
Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee sits down with Katie Couric to discuss whether he'll run in 2012, what he thinks about Sarah Palin, who will be the next GOP rock star and much more.
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See all 89 Comments1) Break down the state barriers imposed on buying health insurance.
2) Save the 500 billion first and put it in a savings account to be used towards subsidy's for American's who want but can't afford health insurance.
3) Pass tort reform.
I am certainly not as good a writer as you but I think it's obvious that this bill is so convoluted and expensive that it will lead us to bankruptcy.
One other thing, don't forget that the payments to this plan start years before the benefits. That was a little accounting trick that allowed the politicians to say that it will be deficit neutral over the next ten years. Even with that trick, they still had to say that medicare would be cut by 500 billion dollars. I'm sure you can see why I'm skeptical. If this country goes bankrupt, what do you think the mortality rate will be then?
In conclusion, I feel as much as you do for the people who need health care in this country, I just don't see this bill as the answer.
That chapter describes Jesus' healing the blind man at Siloam. Jesus' disciples asked Jesus if the man became blind because of his own sins or the sins of his parents. Jesus refuted this belief. Then, he spat in some clay, spread it over the blind man's eyes, and told him to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. The blind man did, and he was cured.
I can't help thinking about John 9:1-7 whenever I hear about the so-called health care debate. Jesus healed the blind man without asking about pre-existing conditions and without asking about the blind man's HMO. But beyond that miracle, I must ask the question - Who was blind in this story? The man whom Jesus cured? Or the community in which the man lived, including the religious authorities, who permitted a cherry-picked verse of scripture blind them to the common humanity they shared with the man they branded and ostracized as unclean?
Except for Obama, I have heard little discussion about the need to health care reform. The media in particular gives a lot of press time to the Tea-Baggers, but almost never shows the plight of the 50 million people in this country without health care. As a result of this blindness, 44,000 thousands Americans die each year because of inadequate medical care. (Source: a recent study by the Harvard University Medical School.)
Babies fare very badly in our for-profit health care system. According to the 2009 CIA World Factbook, our infant mortality rate is twice as high as the infant mortality rates of Sweden or France, and nearly 3 times higher than the infant mortality rate of Singapore. Washington DC has the highest infant mortality rate in the country, according to Statesmaster.com; the infant mortality in DC is 3 times higher than the infant mortality for Sweden or France, and nearly 5 times higher than the infant mortality rate of Singapore. As lobbyists are bribing Senators with campaign contributions, a few blocks away, babies are dying. Why am I the only person in the country who notices this.
Like the religious authorities in Jesus time, who blamed the blind man for his affliction, so blame the victims. We claim they are too lazy to work, or we blame them for not earning enough money to buy health insurance. We blame them for being too fat, or for having a pre-existing condition like acne or asthma. We blame them for having inadequate insurance, or for getting dropped from their insurance provider because they come down with an expensive illness, like breast cancer. Like the religious authorities, we are allowing our love for the market place blind us to the human needs of our neighbors
What makes me even angrier is the blindness of the so-called religious authorities, especially Mike Hucabee, which matches the religious leaders whom Jesus violently denounced. Yes, they will mobilize to keep gays from getting married, or for preventing a 14 year old who has been brutally raped by her stepfather from terminating the resulting pregnancy. But they show absolutely no interest in a health care overhaul that will save thousands of babies lives and will prevent thousands of desperate women from resorting to abortions because they cannot pay medical bills.
When we pledge allegiance to the flag, we claim to be "one nation under God", yet our for profit health care system rations health care according to a person's ability to pay. This is a obscene violation of the most fundamental precept of the Gospel.
Jesus said "Whatsoever you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do also unto me." Our blind, callous disregard for the uninsured is a jihad against Christ.
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