Can you find your way to a hospital? When you get there, can you pay?

You can’t open any newspaper editorial page these days without seeing arguments for and against health care reform. You can’t turn on television coverage of Town Halls around the issue without seeing sometimes gun-toting – as was the case in Phoenix last week – and always sign-toting people protesting the public option as though giving health care to the most vulnerable among us (the very young, the very old, and the very poor) was akin to, well, acting like Hitler.

The comparison, of course, is specious, the crutch of those who cannot argue their case based on merits alone. It is also, as pundits on both the right and the left have explained, trivializing to the millions who suffered under Hilter’s cruel attempt to purify the human race.

But setting that craziness aside, we are still left with the problem of millions of Americans living without access to health care, and, for purposes of God Blogging, a question about people of faith and what they should do about it. According to the folks over at Faith For Health (and a couple of representatives of local Christian communities), believers should get pay attention to what radical discipleship calls one to when reflecting on health care reform. (more…)

Yesterday’s post about assisted suicide drew a lot of comments. One interesting trend was that people assumed (maybe because of the blog being about religion?) that my skepticism re: assisted suicide and the slippery slope of killing perfectly healthy people was a God thing. I never mentioned religion in the post, nor God, yet the ever complimentary, patient and polite Red Star tried to tie the Almighty in, as did a couple others. The Time article I linked to also didn’t mention God, so maybe readers should consider that one can be against assisted suicide for humanist moral reasons, not only religious ones.

My primary point was this: “… there may come a terrible time not too soon in our fast-moving future where the choice to die (signing a living will saying you don’t want a feeding tube, for instance) becomes subtle pressure on the dying to just hurry up and get it over with: “You had a good life, Daddy, don’t you think? Isn’t now the time to just let go? Let me get you some medicine.” ” That’s not someone saying they want to choose their time to die; it is someone “encouraged” to line up for the death drip by family, friends, societial messages, etc.

Migrant farm workers; credit: danhughes.tpus.org

Should society be allowed to regulate that or stop assisted suicide, especially in the cases of perfectly healthy people? Should we force people to keep living who don’t want to? Thorny questions, but one thing is clear: We are failing as a society if people feel pressured in any way to “choose” assisted suicide because they feel like a burden. The sign of a civilized society is the manner in which we care for those least able to care for themselves. Which brings us to the slippery slope and how illegal immigration could help eliminate the concept of “burden.” (more…)