healthcare

I like Phil Wyman's perspective on the health care debate.

I am not sure if the current bill offers more problems than answers, but I want the debate to continue in order to find out. Unfortunately most of the voices I am hearing now are demonizing the other side - from the highest positions on down there are clowns to the left, and jokers to the right. So here I am, stuck in the middle. Anyone else out there stuck in the middle with me?

Mike Clawson sees conservatives demonizing while I see this as true on both sides and so I'm not sure what the value of mentioning that is. And Mike frustrated me a bit by providing what I see as far too simplistic sound bites rather handling the real issues. In his defense, this was a short facebook blurb ... he wrote that he "is confused by the conservative mindset. So when we are starting unprovoked wars or denying civil liberties, the government can do no wrong, and to suggest otherwise is unpatriotic? But when we are trying to make health care accessible for millions of the least of these, the government is an inefficient bureaucracy that can do nothing right?"

In contrast, Kent Leslie tries to identify the issues. He, like I, see that it is not really about Obamacare per sé. That is:

The healthcare debate in the United States comes from two debates that conservatives and progressives are having with one another:

- Is healthcare a right?
- Is it best provided by the government?

There are exceptions, but primarily conservatives say no to both, and progressives say yes to both.

Then after a long civics lesson and a very polite smack-down directed at both sides, he makes this outstanding conclusion:

Healthcare is the responsibility of every follower of Christ Jesus. If everyone isn’t receiving it, we need to change things so that they can. Whether it’s a right or not is moot. Whether we should handle it directly, or indirectly through our government, is I think determined by matters of practicality—if you can do it yourself more practically than the government can, by all means do it. Otherwise I believe the practical thing involves voting in a plan that will help rich and poor alike, employed and unemployed alike. I don’t care if you call it socialism. I call it Christian.

For me personally, I think there is a better way than a government solution but in the end, it should be clear that the Christians of this great country are not following the same Spirit. Our focus is on how the other guy's plan won't work and neither side seems willing to lay down their agenda to follow God ... people are hurting and we aren't healing.

As Jeff Goins puts it, "I think that we Christians in America have all sold ourselves short by aligning ourselves with the political left or right." We need to align with the Kingdom of God ...

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