Posted on 11/05/2025 8:10:41 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Next week my firm will hold its annual health insurance information meeting. The news won’t be good. Premiums are expected to increase 10-15% after increasing a similar amount last year. If only my 401(k) could grow like that!
The bottom line is that my paycheck will become smaller and my health care costs will become larger.
My wife and I have also spent most of this year scurrying through the endless maze of our byzantine and befuddling health care system. Our journey began when my wife’s father had a stroke in April… Over the past seven months we have had the displeasure of dealing with private insurance companies, hospitals, nursing services, medical transportation services, Medicare, Medicaid, and so on. This system is a nightmare.
So I get it. The health care system is a mess and, like many Americans, I want someone to fix it! But the question for Christians is, How should it be fixed? How do Christians apply a biblical worldview to the health care debate?
(Excerpt) Read more at rpwitness.org ...
But now it’s as though the church has left the scene. And “healing the sick” has become a wholly secular, transactional enterprise.
America’s founders did not think to bloat the State because inherent in their understanding were the other primary institutions of society to carry the load and cater to the needs of citizenry: Family, Church, Community etc…
Doctors visited you at home…They often engaged in other trades in addition to medicine.
Not sure if the concept of hospitals becoming a mostly financual enterprise business crossed their minds…
A Christian worldview should also begin with what IS within our control: namely wise stewardship of our bodies. Gluttony is a sin. Exercise and wise eating a must. Etc…
And radical secularist Bill Gates has done more to improve the health of impoverished people in India than Mother Teresa ever did.
Bill Gates, Mother Teresa: voluntary actions not forced on taxpayers. A few questions:
1) How much should the taxpayer be forced to shoulder?
2) How much focus should be on prevention, on health education and
how much should be on treatment after the fact? This second is the RFK debate. Currently we have a sickcare system, not a healthcare system.
3) How much should taxpayers be forced to pay for bad lifestyle choices? Tobacco, alcohol, drugs, promiscuous sex are unhealthy outsized medical costs.
3b) excess sugar, processed foods are 1 level below tobacco, drugs but still significant.
4) How much should taxpayers pay for medical care of immigrants (legal & illegal)?
5) Are there benefits from a society that takes care of each other & seeks equal health?
Are there benefits from freedom to choose & competition in practicing good health?
With all of these questions the answer is a compromise. The reality is that taxpayers will always be forced to share some of the burden. The question is: How much?
How much should people feel the consequences of their bad lifestyle choices?
How much should we reward them for making bad choices?
Bill Gates, Mother Teresa: voluntary actions not forced on taxpayers. A few questions:
1) How much should the taxpayer be forced to shoulder?
2) How much focus should be on prevention, on health education and
how much should be on treatment after the fact? This second is the RFK debate. Currently we have a sickcare system, not a healthcare system.
3) How much should taxpayers be forced to pay for bad lifestyle choices? Tobacco, alcohol, drugs, promiscuous sex are unhealthy outsized medical costs.
3b) excess sugar, processed foods are 1 level below tobacco, drugs but still significant.
4) How much should taxpayers pay for medical care of immigrants (legal & illegal)?
5) Are there benefits from a society that takes care of each other & seeks equal health?
Are there benefits from freedom to choose & competition in practicing good health?
With all of these questions the answer is a compromise. The reality is that taxpayers will always be forced to share some of the burden. The question is: How much?
How much should people feel the consequences of their bad lifestyle choices?
How much should we reward them for making bad choices?
“Premiums are expected to increase 10-15% after increasing a similar amount last year.”
Which care items are up 10% or more?
It helps to understand the problem if you wish to solve the problem.
SEPARATE OUT DRUG COVERAGE
Without having to manage drug coverage, hospital systems can run care coverage systems and cut out most insurance company overhead and meddling. The co-pays and co-insurance would generally be equal to the hospital system’s marginal cost so there would be little reason to say no to a doctor’s request except for medical (or moral) cause.
Hospital system plans might charge a monthly age-related fee if you lack a drug plan listed by the hospital system plan.
What is health care?
1. questions from a doctor
2. orders of a doctor for tests
3. blood sample tests
4. ultrasound
5. MRI
6. CAT
7. x-ray
8. advice from a doctor
9. physical therapy
10. surgery
11. applied radiation
12. orders for a doctor for drugs
13. drug dispensing
14. chemical infusion
Surgery (and sometimes physical therapy) are the only things that take more than one person to do simultaneously.
A three-hour surgery typically takes three people about 12 manhours.
Anesthesia machine - four hours (three to use + one to prep and check)
Bypass machine - four hours (three to use + one to prep and check)
Monitoring machine - three hours+
How many hours of a factory worker’s pay should it take to pay for those 12 manhours?
HOSPITAL COST REDUCTION [by 2028]
Break most hospitals into two highly competitive entities. Convert other hospitals into real estate leasing entities with competing surgical suites and nursing wings.
A religious need to do good should not be stretched to require payment as a result of others’ inefficiency, greed, collusion, stupidity, sloth and unhealthy practices.
Luke 10:25-37
Preach it to both your comments.
as with all things relational, i believe that our Lord set the standard for healthcare between Healer and Patient or Supplicant: the Christian standard of healthcare is the Lord’s grant of bodily autonomy and authority to his Steward, and the implicit grant of informed consent between both Healer and Supplicant.
if you closely read the healing encounters between our Lord and those who sought healing, you will hear informed consent being given, even from the Great Physician Himself.
to that, in the case of a human healer or doctor, i will add Hippocrates’ doctrine of “First do no harm.” this is vitally important and while our Lord didn’t need it, i believe He would endorse in the case of human healers.
gov’t and ‘insurance’ companies, have also taken the free market principle of pay for service out of healthcare as well, which has led to the evil of ‘love of money’ inserting itself between healer and supplicant.
as the gov’t has taken over healthcare, culminating with obamacare, it has imho strayed further and further from the Biblical doctrines of Christian healing and Hippocrates’ oath (one need only look at American healthcare in the recent episode of the covid ‘pandemic’ to confirm this drift), it has killed and harmed more patients, healed fewer patients, and sought to usurp and violate the principle of a patient’s spiritual authority over his/her own bodies.
if American healthcare is to be restored: obamacare must be repealed, and the doctor patient relationship under informed consent and the principle of ‘first do no harm’ must be restored.
The families of the victims of that infamous HPV vaccination campaign a while back likely won’t agree with that assessment.
“How do Christians apply a biblical worldview to the health care debate?”
We don’t use normal “insurance.” Our family of 6 has been using Samaritan Ministries as health cost sharing for the past 8 years. We pay under $800/month, there’s a $300 deductible, preexisting conditions not covered. We love it.
Interesting! 🙏
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