What socialized medicine looks like

What you have to look forward to if the socialists like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders win in 2018: "Native Americans have received federally funded health care for decades. A series of treaties, court cases and acts passed by Congress requires that the government provide low-cost and, in many cases, free care to American Indians. The Indian Health Service (IHS) is charged with delivering that care." [IHS web site quote].

The per person cost is about 1/3 of what the other Americans spend, but is in line with Europe. Also, native Americans have a life expectancy 5.5 years less than all other Americans.

https://www.ihs.gov/newsroom/factsheets/disparities/

Bernadine of Siena—May 20

Whether you're Protestant or Catholic, a "saint of the day" book is an inspirational daily read. Most of these people lived and worshipped before the splits in the church. May 20 is Bernadine of Siena. I think what impressed me about him was he could draw crowds of 30,000 when preaching about sin and vice. No loud speakers, no apps on cell phones, no cameras held up to catch his photo. (no port-a-potties) When he told people to throw their gambling tools into a community bonfire, the manufacturers of playing cards complained he was ruining their livelihood. But in many of our churches we see his work on vestments and paraments. He's the one who promoted the IHS symbol, the first 3 letters of Jesus' name in Greek.

"Worship" is one of those pesky exceptions about not doubling the p. I have to look it up when I use it. The rule is, most verbs ending in ‘p’, like develop or gallop, after an unstressed vowel, have no doubling of that final consonant in standard received British English or American English. But there are exceptions: worship, handicap, kidnap.  I have no idea why.  Just one of the joys of our spelling system.

According to Wikipedia “A Parament or Parement; (from Late Latin paramentum, adornment, parare, to prepare, equip), a term applied by ancient writers to the hangings or ornaments of a room of state. Later it has referred to the liturgical hangings on and around the altar, as well as the cloths hanging from the pulpit and lectern, as well as the ecclesiastical vestments and mitres. In many usages, it is synonymous with altar cloth.”

You may recall (or not) there was a mini-scandal about the IHS being covered up and replaced by the Presidential symbols when Obama spoke at Georgetown (a Catholic university) in April 2009. Just the beginning of many such incidents involving religion. Factcheck confirms this.

Georgetown honored the White House staff’s request to cover all of the Georgetown University signage and symbols behind Gaston Hall stage. The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they’ve done for other policy speeches.

Very much the monarch.

Cradle to the grave health care

We already know what Obamacare looks like; the other first famiies have had it for years:

Native Americans have received federally funded health care for decades. A series of treaties, court cases and acts passed by Congress requires that the government provide low-cost and, in many cases, free care to American Indians. The Indian Health Service (IHS) is charged with delivering that care.

The IHS attempts to provide health care to American Indians and Alaska Natives in one of two ways. It runs 48 hospitals and 230 clinics for which it hires doctors, nurses, and staff and decides what services will be provided. Or it contracts with tribes under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act passed in 1975. In this case, the IHS provides funding for the tribe, which delivers health care to tribal members and makes its own decisions about what services to provide.

The IHS spends about $2,100 per Native American each year, which is considerably below the $6,000 spent per capita on health care across the U.S. But IHS spending per capita is about on par with Finland, Japan, Spain and other top 20 industrialized countries—countries that the Obama administration has said demonstrate that we can spend far less on health care and get better outcomes. In addition, IHS spending will go up by about $1 billion over the next year to reach a total of $4.5 billion by 2010. That includes a $454 million increase in its budget and another $500 million earmarked for the agency in the stimulus package.

Read more about IHS health care, "At Native Americans and the Public Option"

What you can expect with government health care

After Obama succeeds in destroying your current health insurance plan by making it too expensive for small and midsize businesses, what can you expect from the federal government when your employer catches on? It won't be what our elected officials, or civil servants, or even Medicare recipients currently get (although that's about to end). Or even what 3.3 million Native Americans and Alaskan First People get, who have cradle-to-grave care and yet have the highest disease burden and the lowest life expectancy of any U.S. group (how's that plan working). We're about to see one of the biggest give aways to any special interest group (medical technology) from ARRA (stimulus package)--$20 billion--and I know that's just the beginning price tag. I don't know as I'd call those "shovel ready" stimulus jobs or not--the tech field was doing just fine, I thought, with entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and the Google Guys. If you've ever worked with computers, you know the constant upgrading, not talking to each other, and screw ups that can happen. Especially if the government is doing it (I've lost track of the times my identifying information (state of Ohio) has been lost to a hacker or someone taking home a gov't computer that shouldn't and having the computer stolen out of the back seat.)

But back to the Indians and their care givers--I wonder how the IHS will be able to squander the ARRA funds?

"Since June 2008, when Indian Health Service (IHS) officials agreed to implement more stringent controls over property management, the agency has lost about $3.5 million in equipment, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on June 2 (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09450.pdf).

According to the report, missing items included an ultrasound unit (valued at $170 000), an x-ray mammography machine (valued at $100 795), dental chairs, cardiac and vital sign monitors, and a pharmacy tablet-counting machine.

The GAO criticized IHS for taking few steps to ensure that its employees are aware of and complying with property policies. It also suggested that the agency failed to hold individuals accountable, noting that the executive in charge of the agency's property group and other areas was given a $13,000 bonus after a GAO report issued last year found that an estimated 5,000 items with an acquisition value of $15.8 million were reported lost or stolen in fiscal years 2004-2007. Mike Mitka, JAMA, July 8, 2009, p. 136.

And although the government disapproves of businesses giving out bonuses to executives for incentives if the business is losing money, it doesn't mind giving bonuses through its own agencies and programs which are notorious spendthrifts and seem to have gotten us into this pickle, which the government now claims it is going to solve by throwing more money into the laps of the same people! This is not new to the Obama Administration. Before, Obama Bush was the all-time big spender President--Obama has made him look like a penny pinching piker.

"The federal government plans to kick its purchasing power into high gear by offering Medicare and Medicaid bonuses to physicians and hospitals that demonstrate "meaningful use" of interoperable, certified EHRs starting in 2011. The stimulus package also provides billions of grant dollars to federal and state organizations for research and the promotion of health-IT adoption." Government technology

I'm all in favor of incentives--but only in private hands. But guess what else is wanted with that $20 billion from the tax payers? Your patient data. Ah, yes. They are salivating over that--and not for you, oh no, but for the "common good" . . . "the collection of aggregate patient data that could vastly improve patient safety, public health monitoring, and medical knowledge. Kind of HIPAA in reverse, I think. There is also a proposal being floated that we not have a choice about participating in medical research (as a control, as a donor, etc.) "The Obligation to Participate in Biomedical Research," JAMA, July 1, 2009 p. 67. I thought it was about the scariest thing I'd ever read combined with the med tech rec threat. The authors, Schaefer, Emanuel and Wertheimer, called reluctance or refusal to participate, "free riding." In other words, your DNA, your experience, or your sick child are just so much gravel to pave the road to losing your freedom. It could be a trade off for the charitable deduction which will probably be taken away (Biden and Obama really didn't use those much anyway)--donate at the lab instead of church.

Another medical boondoggle in the ARRA is $1 billion to support comparative effectiveness research. I'd call that a jobs program for researchers who didn't get medical degrees comparing this device to that device, practice A to practice B, therapy Y to therapy X and then filing for more grant money when no one pays attention.

Will Muslim women remove their burkas for Obama?

Will Amish women take off those prayer veils? Will conservative Catholic nuns slip out of their plain habits? The clothing for men and women members of conservative religious groups is about headship; it's symbolism, not modesty. It's about relationships and spiritual authority: God, then men, then women. It's every bit as symbolic as an IHS on a podium or window that Obama wanted draped and blacked out.

Gerald F. Seib missed it again in Capital Journal in today's WSJ. "Not a single new policy was revealed" at Obama's Georgetown speech. It was a speech of metaphors, he said. Well, Mr. Seib, you didn't see the significance of the trial balloon, did you? You got all warm and fuzzy on the "house upon a rock" thinking it was Biblical. No sir, that just comes from 20 years of Rev. Wright's turning a phrase. Obama didn't know how to speak black when he first got to Chicago, having been raised in a white, agnostic home. You need to dig a little deeper. Let me help.

Obama asked that a Christian symbol be removed, and Georgetown University, one of our oldest Catholic institutions, made the mistake of complying. Seems like a small thing unless you remember some of Obama's promises (threats) during the campaign. That he intended to rein (reign) in "faith based" groups that get government money. He's planning to have all religious symbols removed from buildings that use government money for child care, food distribution, job training, mortgage workshops, voter registration, etc. Churches are going to have to do a lot of "soul searching" and just may need to tell the government that they won't be their go-to guys any more. Remember that the request removed not just a symbol, but a tradition of separation of church and state [i.e., the state doesn't tell the church how to adorn its own buildings and property], and destroyed the historic artistic atmosphere of the room. Georgetown is as old as our Constitution--maybe its crumbling is a sign?

"Julie Bataille from the university's press office e-mailed me that the White House had asked that all university signage and symbols behind the stage in Gaston Hall be covered.

"The White House wanted a simple backdrop of flags and pipe and drape for the speech, consistent with what they've done for other policy speeches," she wrote. "Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn't high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context."

The primary command of the church, given by Jesus himself, is

"Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age."

So if the U.S. government decides you can't obey what the Bible says about the primary mission of the church, or that you need to bless the weddings of gays, or that you can't have religious instruction in your schools, or that you can't have a Bible in the classroom, I guess you'll just have to turn down that Faustian compact we've had for so many years.

Now Christians will have to choose

The problem I had with "faith based" agencies (like our church, Upper Arlington Lutheran which is an ELCA church) accepting government grants for housing, employment training, child care, and after school and summer lunch programs was that they were not allowed to preach the gospel to any of the recipients because taxpayers were footing the bill. Not even distribute literature--although it could be put out for pick up. But worse, it caused these churches to become dependent on the government, while they were providing the free labor for government programs.

Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign PROMISED to have any visuals and symbols removed from religious sites in order for them to receive government money for social programs. This will be no problem for mainline "peace and justice" Christians--they wouldn't know the gospel if it dropped on their pulpit in the form of a Bible (it's pretty clear if they'd just preach from that Bible). For evangelical Christians, such as UALC, it's a bit less clear. Now we've made a pact with the devil and the invoice has come due. What will the churches do? Apparently what Georgetown did. Founded in 1789, the same year the U.S. Constitution took effect, Georgetown University is the nation's oldest Catholic and Jesuit university. IHS, the symbol in question, is a monogram of the name of Jesus Christ.

(CNSNews.com) - Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram “IHS”--symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ—because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the “IHS” monogram that had previously adorned the stage at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall was still covered up--when the pediment where it had appeared was photographed by CNSNews.com.

American freedom of religion, rest in peace