Bricker, I’m a Christian and mostly opposed to abortion, but you have to admit that it’s not a topic that’s really addressed in the Bible. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” isn’t relevant at all, because it’s in reference to the timeless nature of God, not to when personhood begins: It can’t be in reference to when personhood begins, because it says “before”, not “ever since”.
The closest I can find to any reference to prenatal personhood is at Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, when the child within Elizabeth’s womb (who would later be John the Baptist) leapt for joy. But that’s somewhere in the third trimester, and a restriction on third-trimester abortion isn’t all that controversial even among the nonreligious.
So when Ryan is Repub-splaining how health insurance works in one breath, in the next, he’s staunchly defending every red blooded American’s right NOT to be forced to pay for health insurance.
QFT. The thing that some people forget is that there aren’t simply healthy people and sick people. There are currently healthy people who may acquire serious medical problems at any time, and currently sick people who may get better. Anyone’s house can get struck by lightning, and anyone’s car can get totalled. That’s why we get insurance. We are all in the same boat, and it’s sinking.
Here’s the problem with the “fundamental principle of insurance” argument. Life insurance, car insurance, and all other forms of insurance are not determiners of life and death, or the alleviation of human suffering. Thousands of Americans literally die every year from lack of adequate health care coverage. There is no way to argue that this isn’t a moral issue.
There is thus a fundamental disconnect between the fundamental principle of insurance as a business and the moral and ethical imperative of health care. Generally speaking most countries’ health insurance systems manage this problem for all or the majority of the population through a community-rated premium model, where everyone pays the same rate for the same services, and the young and healthy are, quite literally, paying for the sick and the elderly. But everyone is in the same boat due to universal coverage and universal participation, and it ultimately saves a great deal of money on a per-capita basis.
What Ryan and the other Republicans are doing is seeking to emphasize the worst, most unfair, and most unworkable aspects of the health insurance system. They’re exhibiting a reckless disregard for moral principles and basic human decency in order to promote a completely inappropriate commercial insurance model for health care on behalf of their corporate masters, particularly the insurance lobby, and they don’t care how many people suffer and die because of it. They deserve all the scorn they’re getting.
Another thing that people forget is that sick people still contribute to the net economy, and that healthcare allows them to continue to contribute. I have Diabetes - This doesn’t mean that I don’t pay taxes, it doesn’t mean I dont buy things - And it certainly doesn’t mean I don’t contriubte to the bottom line of my company. I’m not on the public dime, for healthcare, but I could be, depending on circumstances. Without the therapies provided by insurance, I’d be dead years ago. Instead, I am able to actively participate in the economic health of the nation, and will be doing so for decades to come (provided I don’t step under a falling rock).
Insurance, in my case, and in the case of millions of people like me, means prolonging our economic contribution to the GNP and society in general.
Even assuming that’s true, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t also a practical component as well. Ryan was addressing the practical aspect of it, and it’s wrong to pretend that he was discussing morality.
You mentioned Christian teachings. Do you feel it’s consistent with Christian teachings to identify as a Christian without acting as a Christian?
It’s true God didn’t specifically say “implement Christian-grounded legislation”. It’s also true I didn’t make that claim. I guess in Bricker’s Law of SDMB Discourse, two no’s equals one so.
What I said was “follow basic Christian beliefs”. And God had a lot to say about helping the sick and the poor; He was in favor of it. God seems to feel that acting like a Christian is a necessary part of being a Christian.
That bit in your quote about the “womb miscarrying” is a mistranslation. The correct translation is that her “thigh should fall”, pregnant or not pregnant. Whatever one’s opinion of the idea of curses for a woman suspected of adultery, those verses offer no direction on the subject of abortion.
There’s no “assuming” here – it’s self-evidently true that health insurance is not the same as car insurance in deeply fundamental ways, and there’s no lack of evidence that thousands of Americans die prematurely every year for lack of affordable health care. As for the practical component, I addressed practical options in the next two paragraphs – the ones that you didn’t quote and chose not to respond to. Do you deny that every civilized country on earth has been able to provide universal health care, and that those solutions are “practical”? And even if you want a uniquely American solution largely focused on private insurance, do you deny that the ACA has gone a long way toward reducing the number of uninsured and making health care more accessible to millions? You know the ACA – that thing that Republicans have spent the last 8 years constantly trying to repeal! I think they tried about 50 times, so much did it irk them that the poor and sick were getting health care that they didn’t “deserve”. This time they actually had the votes to do it, but it gradually became apparent that the shameless pandering to the rich while depriving millions of health care was going to cost them votes.
The truth is that the problem with the ACA is that it doesn’t go nearly far enough. It needs more regulation, more subsidies, and a greater push toward true universality including a public option that private insurers would have to compete with. It needs, IOW, precisely those things that Republicans want to move away from the most, and fast. And now they can’t do it because the sheer irrationality and blatant pandering of what they want has bitten them in the ass.
You know it’s an American site when a discussion about healthcare immediately descends into arguments about Christianity and abortions. The forces arrayed against UHC are responsible for more dead Americans than ISIS could ever dream.
