Faith, Medicine, and Obamacare

I know pretty much nothing about national economics. I don’t really know much about the medical insurance industry, either. But despite that, I have something to say! ;-)

I recently read a very interesting article by Ann Coulter. Go there and read the whole thing, but here are a few things she said:

If Obamacare is not stopped, it will permanently change the political culture of this country. There will be no going back. America will become a less productive, less wealthy nation. What wealth remains will have to be plowed into Obamacare -- to the delight only of the tens of thousands of government bureaucrats administering it. 

…

The reason we have Obamacare is not because the public was clamoring for the federal government to take over health care. It's because the Democrats had 60 senators. In the frozen ideology of the left, it doesn't matter if anyone wants government health care.
…

As soon as all Americans have been thrown off their employer-provided insurance plans and are forced to start depending on the government for health care, Republicans will never be able to repeal it.

The private insurance market will be gone. Most Americans won't be able to conceive of getting health care that doesn't come from the government -- just as people in the Soviet Union couldn't imagine how they'd get bread if the government didn't provide it.

(Also similar to Communist systems, you'll have to know someone in power to get decent medical care.)

A powerful health care Leviathan will arise, composed of self-paced, well-pensioned, unionized government workers who will manage our health care from 10 a.m.-3 p.m., except federal holidays, sick days, mental health days and in bad weather. (The day after Hurricane Sandy, everything was open on the mostly unaffected Upper East Side of New York -- but not the post office.)

That all sounds quite plausible – even probable – to me.

But I have other thoughts about health care and medical insurance, too. I don’t talk about it much, because, as I said, I don’t know much, and I don’t think anyone else looks at it the way I do.

But what the heck; for the record, here’s how I look at it:

Why is medical insurance so expensive? I think it’s because we are so dependent on it. Got the sniffles? Run to your doc, or maybe even the ER for a really quick appointment so you can get some meds to take care of it right away – whether or not those meds are really responsible for making you better. If everyone runs to the doctor’s office at the least sign of “illness”, that’s going to make the cost go up. Supply and demand, right? When the demand is great and the supply low, the cost increases. I know that much.

My extreme view is that the devil is at least partially to blame in all this. He is pleased as punch that we depend so much on medicine to heal our illnesses – especially the minor illnesses that are really just causing us a little discomfort. Look at all the medications that are available for everything that ails you, whether it’s psycho-emotional pain or physical pain. If you’re uncomfortable, there’s a pill for that.

When a particular medication seems to be very effective, and people start demanding it and depending on it to cure them, Satan is quite pleased. Why? Because every medication has side effects that are glossed over; oh, they’re mentioned in the fine print, and maybe the pharmacist lists them off for you, but who pays attention when it’s a medicine that makes you feel oh-so-much better! Then a whole bunch of people get hooked on that medication and use it a lot, and then comes the bad news: the medication’s side effects are even worse than originally thought, and now those using it are at risk for this, that, or the other thing, and they must find something else that does the same thing – only better. And those who experience the side effects can sue someone.

And when all else fails, sue the doctor. Malpractice and all that (which is not to say that there isn’t malpractice!!). The malpractice suits make the price of medical care go up, too, as docs have to pay outrageous sums for malpractice insurance. And since doctors have to worry about malpractice suits, they will tend to be very conservative in their diagnosis and prescriptions, afraid to venture out and suggest an alternative treatment because a) it might not work and they’ll be sued; and b) the insurance companies won’t pay for it.

What’s going on here is that Satan replaces our faith in God with faith in medication. Then he pulls out the rug from beneath the medication. What’s left? Where is our faith then?

“What?!?”  I hear people shrieking. “Are you one of the ‘faith healer’ types?!”

No, not really. I know there are benefits provided by modern medicine, and that diseases  

and illnesses that were once fatal are not so any longer. But I also know that those in the medical profession often have quite an inflated view of their own “ability” to effectively treat illnesses. Most doctors believe in God; they’re just surprised to find out that they are not Him.

And let’s face it; we are definitely pushed toward reliance on medicine. Consider vaccines…now there’s another hot button….well, for me, anyway. Most people seem to accept that it’s wise to get vaccinated against any number of diseases and maladies. Flu shots, shingles vaccines…no thanks. There are plenty of documented problems with those things.

And then there are the vaccines for children. There are people – medical people, even – who disagree with the huge number of vaccines pushed on children. I’m not up on all the research in that area, but I know it exists. I also know that the medical profession and the school system will tell parents that vaccines are required if you want your child to attend public school; I also know that there are ways to opt out of the vaccines. They keep adding more vaccines, too; and I know that the recent push for the Gardasil vaccine is ludicrous, as well as dangerous, and presented in a guilt-trip format to encourage mothers (especially) to have it given to their daughters. (See my posts on Gardasil here and here.)

Then there’s cancer research and cancer treatment. Again, I am not an expert here. But I do know there are alternative treatments for cancer – treatments that don’t require bringing a person as close to death as possible in order to kill the cancer but not the patient. I also know that medical insurance doesn’t cover alternative treatments for cancer. Further, I don’t think anyone questions that cancer research is big, big business. What do you suppose would happen if a cure for cancer was actually discovered? I think a lot of people would be out of work.

And what about those faith-healer types? There are plenty of stories about parents who were jailed for the deaths of children who died because the parents didn’t seek medical treatment for them – because they believed in the power of prayer to heal the sick child. I’m not inclined to give an opinion about those cases, but I do have a question: we have been reading and talking so much about religious freedom…well, where is the religious freedom of those parents who want to rely on prayer to heal their own and their children’s illnesses?

Just sayin’.