And government-run health care does not provide for all, either. Furthermore, government-run health care means taking property away from one group and giving to another. It also means forcibly preventing two people from making a voluntary exchange related to health care. It certainly violates a lot of the principles that I accept as being proper for a just government.
Now you seem to be deliberately misleading about what the passage says. It clearly says that Ananias was free to do with the property as he wished, but since he lied he sinned. And for that God struck him dead. Your reading of it does not agree with the text whatsoever.
Again, it sounds like Jesus is telling Christians to be homeless. I don’t see any indication he thought His followers should live as communists.
Yes, the early followers agreed to do this. How does that make it mandatory on future followers?
You are trying to say that it is mandatory for Christians to live in a communist system. I’m simply saying that if Christians choose to do so, that’s great. But there is no support for your view that the early church leaders forced people to live a communist lifestyle. You are trying to score points against Christians by saying “you people don’t live like communists, so you are not following the Bible.” I am pointing out that your reading of the Bible is superficial.
Acts 5:2-5:
2With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.
3Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God."
5When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.
In the real world, where adding not-for-profit government administration and removing expensive for-profit multiple middlemendoes frequently decrease administrative overhead.
A similar coronary bypass operation performed in the UK National Health Service is priced at £8,080 these days, or about US$16,400, which is still substantially less than the 2005 price of such an operation in the US.
Take off your market-fundamentalist blinders, Martin, and look at the facts themselves. The facts show that government-run universal health-care systems generally are cheaper than the current US system. That conclusion may be heresy and anathema to market fundamentalists, but that’s not an excuse for denying the facts.
In practice, it frequently is, because in our system, insurance companies are often the ones who determine what medical care gets provided.
They also fail to serve the medical needs of the society in general when they deny coverage and care to people who need them. I’m not faulting the individual insurance companies for this (except when they deliberately give patients the runaround to avoid paying legitimate claims); they’re profit-making companies, and their commercial goal of making money has to outweigh their social purpose of enabling people to afford the medical care they need. What I’m faulting is the system as a whole, which as it stands is inefficient and incapable of adequately handling our health-care needs as a society.
Again, I think your partisanship is leading you to deny the facts. As John Mace (I think it was John) pointed out somewhere earlier in this thread, several US states are moving toward universal health-care coverage systems, either single-payer or with public/private partnerships. Maine has already enacted such a statewide system, and a dozen or so other state legislatures have introduced similar bills. This is not a when-pigs-fly pipedream. This is happening now.
It will take somewhat longer to work out such a system on a national level; according to John (I still think it was John), the states are the natural laboratories for working out the mechanics of universal coverage, and the bulk of the transition will happen at the state level. And I think he’s right about that. But I think that the natural consequence will be that the federal government at some point will step in and to some extent standardize the patchwork of different state-level universal health-care plans.
I know what the passage says. I’m saying the author himself is being disingenuous.
ETA, I also think this passage may be redacted. In any case, I see no difference between being killed for not coughing up every penny or being killed for lying about how many pennies you have. It’s a story designed to terrorize Christians out of holding out.
No it doesn’t. You can still pay through the nose for a private doctor if you want to. You can even pay extortionary prices for drugs if that makes you happy. Universal health care does not mean that private options have to be illegal, just that they no longer have to be necessary.
I’m trying to say there is no difference between being killed for holding out and beinbg killed for lying about how much money you have. It amounts to the same message – don’t try to hold out or God will kill you.
You’re not reading very carefully, then. Living without private property or class divisions is communism. Pure and simple.
I don’t think anything is mandatory. I’m just observing that modern Christians don’t follow the teachings of Jesus and don’t live like the original communities which were set up by his apostles.
What is your excuse for not giving everything you own to the poor? Do you give freely to anyone who asks? If not, why not? If I ask you for your coat will you give me your shirt as well? If not, why not?
Even if you see these kinds of commands as injunctions to live ascetically (“homelessly”), as long as these ascetics live communally and share property in common then they’re living communistically by definition.
Clearly you are unaware of the long wait for many services and the refusal to serve some deemed “too sick” that occur in many socialized medicine regimes.
You can’t see the difference between a) being told by someone to give them all your property and then killing you when you don’t or b) agreeing to sell your property and give all the proceeds to the church, and then lying about keeping some of the money and being struck dead?
Interesting. I was unaware that the homeless were living according to both the wishes of Christ and Marx.
Because I’m an imperfect Christian.
I don’t think you’d like the shirt I’m wearing right now. It’s kind of old and dirty.
No, I don’t. Let’s imagine I tell a homeless guy that I’m broke today but tomorrow I’ll give him my whole paycheck. When Tomorrow comes, I cash my check but I only give him half of it. I lie and tell him I’m giving him all of it. Does the homeless guy now have a right to kill me? Does it really make a difference if he kills me to rob me outright or kills me because I lied when I said I was giving him all my money? When I told him yesterday that I would give him my whole paycheck today, was I establishing a binding contract which gave him the right to take my life if he breeched it?
In the Ananias story, you can substitute God for the bum on the street. The only difference beween God and the bum is that the bum actually needed some money.
Only if they intentionally abstain from owning private property and share whatever they have with anyone who asks.
Problem is, the guy spoke in parables and riddles and used all sorts of rhetorical devices to get his point across. When Jesus said if someone asks for your cloak, give him your shirt, too, did he really mean that literally or was he just saying that for emphasis? We honestly don’t know.
Says who? We know for a fact that certain things were added into the Gospels to make them pack more punch, so to speak.
If I were a Christian, I’d assume that Christ’s message started getting mangled as soon as he left his Apostles alone. Who knows why that passage got into Acts about someone being killed for not giving up all his property? It might just have been a way for the leaders at the time to keep people under their control. Religious leaders do that all the time, and Christianity is rife with examples.
'Scuse me John, could you take a break from the politico-soteriological hijack (not that it’s not fascinating, mind you) for just a minute and remind me what and where it was you said about the development of state-level universal health-care plans? (Cf. post #183 above.) Thanks!
Indeed it was. And as expected, I got a sensible response from a rational person. TY.
BTW, do you think you could take a crack at explaining “social democracy” as practiced in most the EU? Because even though I tried, reading the rest of the thread it seems to have gone right over the collective heads of those that still conflate any type of “ism” with the devil. Either that, or they simply don’t care to learn about what is currently happening in Europe.
If you do – take a shot – good luck.
And thanks again for your (measured and pragmatic) response.
Yes, that’s pretty much what I said. I’d emphasize that I just can’t see us getting anything like a European-style healthcare system through Congress. Maybe once enough states take the lead and get their own systems in place, there will be some way to roll them up into a national plan applying to all the states, but I’m still not clear on exactly how that would happen. What I see the federal government doing is diddling around at the edges, like they usually do. The last time we made radical changes to the way government provides services to the American people was the New Deal, and that was in response to a Depression.
Kimstu, never mind my appeal. I see that you’ve already spoon-fed the main notions in your post 183.
Honestly, I don’t quite ‘get’ the responses that follow. Of course, being European myself, no doubt it’s due to my inherent slowness and/or my need for a Nanny State to take care of me – due to the former deficit no doubt.
But that links says the additional cost is due to labor and medicine cost, not for-profit multiple middlemen. That was actually in the part you quoted. The cite about the cost in the UK didn’t give a reason for the cost discrepancy.