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November 4, 2009

Healthcare, faith, healing, fixing the system

There are pages of thoughts behind this post.

Let's start with how radically broken the US healthcare system is. Radically, meaning at the root: at the root of the problem is the notion that gambling on whether I get sick or not is a rational way to fund health care. "Health Insurance" has no place in a rational society that recognizes the human right to health: and that in general, human beings should not be punished for the state of their health. Since its takes humanity to create the ills that befall us (see rising cancer rates. increases in asthma), humans as individuals cannot carry the burden of modernity.

Some people react to the randomness of the world by believing in religious healers. Though it is true that your mental and physical states are closely aligned, and that moral psychology can help diminish dis-ease, US healthcare will not be made better by inserting Christian Science into the officially sanctioned list of disease fighters.

At the end of the day, "prayer treatments" are probably a sham, and definitely have no place in the federal healthcare overhaul bill. But it's a minor, farcical side note to a larger transgression: in the name of political expediency, the Democratic Party threw its principles away to convert a minority, mis-informed conservative cabal that believes Economics & Individual Responsibility & Free Trade Greed will cure the US healthcare crisis.

"Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments," by Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger in the LA Times

At a later date, I hope to have time to continue this thread.

Posted by cj at November 4, 2009 10:05 PM

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