Why do conservatives distrust and fear the government by default, but have complete confidence and faith in the private sector?
Both the private sector and government are human endeavors and as such they are imperfect and tainted by sin. The private sector and the government have also both been the source of creative innovations that have greatly improved our standards of living. Why is it that the government rarely gets credit for its successes, and the private sector is rarely held accountable for its failures? The current state of our health care is a moral and financial failure. We spend more money on health care per person than anyone else in the world, and every day thousands of Americans go without the medical attention they need.
This is not right.
God is not pleased with this system.
We can do better. We must do better.
Jesus says that we will be separated like sheep and goats based on how we treat the poor. He said "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." I am lead to believe that it is a sin to oppose a health care system that will give universal coverage to the "least of these" because it will cost more money.
I may be a little biased as a government employee who is the son of two public school teachers, but I think our government can do a better job with health care than the patch work of private companies that are in charge now. They can't do much worse.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Kyle, I worked in a hospital for a while here in Denver, and I absolutely agree that our health care system is a crumbling debacle of greed, misappropriation and neglect. Faith in the private sector, or faith in so-called "free-market capitalism", inevitably leads people to choose towards the most profitable decisions, whether it be the food industry's penchant for feeding livestock the dead bodies of other cows, or allowing human medical issues to worsen in order to provide expensive surgeries.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that the US government is prepared to offer a seamless health program to such a large and diverse population as the United States, but as someone who has been utterly without health insurance for over 3 years now, I am fully aware of the need for drastic change.
-Adam
The most ironic criticism of universal health care is that there will be bureaucrats making medical decisions for you. The bureaucrats are already there and the medical care that they deny you helps pay for their trip to Jamaica.
ReplyDeleteThat's great to hear about your church and the free clinic. Would you agree that if every able church did what yours is planning, this issue would essentially disappear (not fully, of course...but beyond any kind of supposed crisis state)? Would you agree that the Church feeding the poor/caring for the sick is always the better option?
ReplyDeleteOther thoughts/questions I've had as I consider the topic:
Does the health care "crisis" at all parallel the War on Poverty? Was the US government justified in creating the welfare state? Was it Constitutional? Was it Biblical? Did it "work"?