Questions about Health Care Reform

Health Care Reform, according to President Obama and the Democratic congressional majority, is now the law of the land. Apart from debating the philosophical merits of the issue, I share some troubling observations.

When did congressional bribing become legal? How can taxpayer funds be channeled to obstinate or hesitant members of Congress and the Senate to be bought at will? Shouldn’t votes be made on the basis of district sentiment or at least personal convictions? What does this indicate to impressionable youth or unstable voters? When the highest officials in the land countenance huge political payoffs to pass a measure rejected by a majority of Americans—a measure affecting one sixth of the national economy and every person in the U.S. who breathes—it is obvious our country needs a moral and spiritual revival.

When the chief executive totally reverses promises made while campaigning and refuses to give an explanation but rather taunts legitimate questioners, it is a sad day in America. Transparency? A joke! Never passing legislation by a 51% margin? Another travesty of honor.

And who would think that abortion, scarcely mentioned in the 2008 presidential campaign, becomes the hinge on which perhaps the most massive legislation ever passed in modern times is found to turn? Who would think that an obscure congressman from Michigan, whose basic moral conviction is pro-life, can be forced into voting subjection with threats of retribution (which is likely what happened), lead fellow congressmen into a legal morass, and willingly be led over the reelection cliff? Isn’t something wretchedly wrong with this picture?

Despite arguments to the contrary, abortion is not an obscure issue nor is the pro-life position an outdated argument. Instead of crafting the law against it, the caving congressman was thrown the sop of a pathetically non-binding Executive Order and sacrificed personal conviction on the altar of political expediency.

Have we become a nation of morally bankrupt politicians who serve either dangerous preferences or, worse, sinister invisible influences marching us lock-step toward socialism and globalism? Time will surely tell, but it appears this might happen sooner rather than later.

Speaking of a biblical principle, Proverbs 18:13 says that a man who “answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.” Almost no one read the entire bill. We were told that it was too long and too complicated. But proponents voted for it anyway.

And how can intelligent men and women assign to government the questions of life and death in health care? Doesn’t our coin and currency say, “In God we trust?” Don’t we pledge, “One nation under God?” Relative to spiritual insight the slim political majority pushed the accelerator to the secular floor while hitting the spiritual brakes.

America’s founders wrote into the Constitution that the entire House of Representatives may be turned inside out every two years. Christians should be praying as always for politicians whether they like or loathe them (I Timothy 2:1), but rendering to Caesar, as Christ commanded in Luke 20:25, will be the voter’s obligation next November. In America, Caesar is the Constitution, which assigns ultimate responsibility in government to the voters, who may either affirm all I’ve negatively outlined as questionable or even dirty politics or resist and set a new course for the health of the nation, spiritually and physically.

When leadership is deceptive, elections can be corrective. The choice is ours unless even this precious Constitutional heritage is subtly corrupted.

Dave Virkler