| 5:35p |
Apparently conservative Christians are not happy with the idea of national healthcare reform.
Now I don’t know this for sure. I haven’t even bothered to research it. But aside from wackadoo conspiracy theories about Obama’s secret Muslim terrorist roots, there is no other earthly reason for Christians to oppose health care reform (except maybe really out there fears that the OWG will make us all get the Mark of the Beast or something). You’d think it’d be the one thing they wouldn’t oppose, even a hardline conservative fungelical can’t actually turn their back on sick little kids and old people, right? Most of the fungelicals I know spend hundreds of dollars on charities, both foreign and domestic and are always the first to show up with a fruit basket when you're in the hospital.
But I think they’ve somehow got it into their heads that a national healthcare system would mean the government would force doctors to treat gay people and to give abortions, or even just provide Plan B when specifically requested.
They’re probably right. Once the US government gets involved, unless you’re in the military, there is no chance you’ll be allowed to simply pick and choose your patients based on your opinion of their moral fitness.
The British NHS came into being just after WWII, and homosexuality wasn’t legalized in the UK until the end of the 60s, so being a national healthcare system probably didn’t really stop people from discriminating. We are, however, now in a different era and many changes have occurred in European and American social attitudes. If it’d been created in the 21st century or even the 90s, that sort of discrimination would not have been allowed (and it wasnt' seen as discrimination because gay people and women who wanted abortions didn't see themselves as having the right to demand otherwise-the medical community at large diagnosed homosexuality as a mental disorder and abortions were not spoken of in polite company). And I seriously think that’s what people are afraid of, deep down. Public health care will be like public schools and public libraries-it has to be open to everyone regardless of how you feel about their lifestyle. Right now, denying care based on a person’s lifestyle is just bad customer service, with the feds involved it’d be a illegal.
Of course, rather than totally flipping out at the mere mention of the idea… they could always lobby for the plan to be under the control of individual states, you know, kind of like public schools or the DMV, the federal government gives all the states a broad outline of what they want and then leaves it up to each state to interpret. I mean, I don’t think the federal government could manage a national healthcare system run entirely out of Washington, but this would be something, maybe even something that worked for everyone.
Except those people who get stuck in a state run by conservative Christians. |