more on health care …
I’ve received a lot of positive response to my open letter on health care. Here’s a sample:
Dear Brian McLaren, Your open letter to Christian Conservatives about health care reform is one of the best presentations I’ve seen since this all began. I will take it to my Republican Congressional Representative’s office this week, along with my views, concerns and position on the subject, all to be offered in resolute courtesy. I have blood relatives who know of my support for health care reform and the criticism they have heaped on me has been shocking, eye-opening, down-heartening, and testing. I did not engage them, they sought me out and, now in bewilderment, I wonder if the old familial warmth may ever be rekindled, for now it is cold. Discourse has dropped into ad hominem hate speech against almost anyone who disagrees with them, and all in the name of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ “who hates the anti-Christ and all his demons” of which, apparently, I am one. This boggles me. Thanks for your help
More after the jump …
Someone raised this question:
To whom it may concern,
Brian made the following claim in his recent blog posting on healthcare reform, and Christians’ proper role in the debate:Getting the kind of reform we need won’t be easy, especially with so many powerful interests spending huge amounts of money to achieve their own ends, with too little concern for justice, the common good … or the truth.
I would very much like to see the supporting evidence for this claim. Brian, as many others, has made this claim in sound-byte fashion, and I have yet to see one party who has made this claim support it with substantiating evidence.
Here are two links of many that will quickly come up if you google “health care lobbying.” The second one makes a worthwhile point that shouldn’t be forgotten in all the controversy – that lobbyists “aren’t just vultures,” but they can provide legislators with valuable technical information to help inform decision-making.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124941851099605703.html
http://www.managedcaremag.com/archives/0208/0208.lobbying.html
My hunch is, though, that there are political and social/cultural gains and losses at play here that may be bigger than financial ones. But that’s another story.
