Health Care Reform

[Jude]

"But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs."

Matthew 15:26, Jesus' response after a foreigner asked him for help

[Turumarth]

But then, according to the story, Jesus went on to extend his rather miraculous "health care coverage" to the foreign woman's daughter.

Actually, I myself am not a believer. But I recognize that between Ayn Rand and the more traditional or "orthodox" forms of Christianity there is a very severe contradiction.

[yovargas]

As someone who was for a long while a fan of Ayn Rand, and still has a bit of a soft spot for her cooky ideas, the idea of Christian Rand fans is utterly mind-boggling.

[Frelga]

Didn't you hear? When Jesus said "the least of these my brethren" he only meant other Christians. Although even by that yardstick the conservative right fails amazingly.

[River]

In some corners of Christianity, true followers of Christ are narrowed down to a very specific sub-group of the general Christian population. That might be a shield some on the hard right hide behind. Others are probably just chugging down that cognitive dissonance juice.

[Frelga]

Gallup: Affordable Care Act Gains Majority Approval for First Time

[Primula Baggins]

There's no better way to make people appreciate what they have than to threaten to take it away.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And yet the GOP is still trying to repeal it. Their latest proposal would essentially allow states to eliminate the protection for people with preexisting conditions.

[River]

Looks like this week's attempt is falling apart. Which means they really will have to go into recess and face angry constituents. Some will be angry they didn't get the repeal/replace and others will be angry they even tried.

It's amazing that, for years, they held all these largely symbolic votes and threw around all this rhetoric and yet never bothered to come up with a viable plan.

[Primula Baggins]

I think they were stuck. The more aware of them knew that the basic structure of Obamacare is a three-legged stool: cover everyone/individual mandate/premium support. No program based on private insurance can work without all three, and no two of those things can exist in such a program without the third. Almost everyone loves "cover everyone." But "individual mandate" is unpopular with many voters, and fiscal conservatives hate "premium support."

They really lost this battle when Obamacare passed in 2010. People now know what it's like to have insurance—and not just any insurance; insurance that pays for the important stuff and can't weasel out on you, and that most people can afford. The awful policies we all just accepted pre-ACA because we knew we had to now seem like nightmare scenarios, and even people who resisted Obamacare now don't want to give it up and go back to those days when the purpose of health insurance was to generate revenue for insurance companies and dividends for their stockholders.

Republicans didn't want to work on their alternative because it would have to look like Trumpcare, and word would get out—and we all saw what happened when it did, even in very red districts. It was much easier just to keep promising something they would never be able to deliver.

Then the dog caught the car. . . .

[River]

One of the weird quirks of politics is no one's going to get fired for this sort of crap. If I had that kind of work ethic I would not have been part of the 50% of my cohort that actually finished with the degree we signed up for (our department was a little notorious on that campus), never mind gotten anywhere else I've been.

[Primula Baggins]

I do think there are plenty of Republican representatives, at least, who are afraid enough of being fired that the new ideas being floated this week have no chance. People hated the last version; what makes the people working on this think that the smartest thing to do is make it even worse?

[Cerin]

It never ceases to amaze me that Paul Ryan (and others) consider themselves followers of Jesus Christ and yet are admirers of Ayn Rand at the same time.

Is that actually the case? I know it's easy to lump all of those Republicans together. I believe Ryan is the most well-known fan of Rand, but I haven't gotten the impression that he is religiously driven.

[JewelSong]

I believe Ryan is the most well-known fan of Rand, but I haven't gotten the impression that he is religiously driven.

Apparently, he is.

Catholicism seems to totally inform Ryan’s worldview and, most notably, his political stances... He once said: "A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private."

From here: http://hollowverse.com/paul-ryan/

And that is just one article of many I found doing a quick search.

[Frelga]

A quick Google turned up this from April 2012 wapo https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 0a3225d522

"In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody this month, Ryan, the author of the House Republican budget endorsed by Mitt Romney, said his program was crafted “using my Catholic faith” as inspiration. But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was not about to bless that claim."

Although Ryan's religious beliefs and any resulting cognitive dissonance are really very low on my list of concerns.

[Inanna]

I love you Frelga for using the phrase "cognitive dissonance"

[Cerin]

It doesn't surprise me of a Catholic (knowing, as I do from experience, that one can be a Catholic and know almost nothing about what's in the Bible), but are any of the fundamentalists/evangelicals known to be Rand enthusiasts?

[River]

Anyone remember what church Rand Paul goes to?

[Túrin Turambar]

Presbyterian

To be honest, the New Testament is open to so many possible interpretations that I think you can find scriptural justification for pretty much any mainstream political position (and many non-mainstream ones, too). I remember we had a really interesting discussion a while back where we went through the views on salvation expressed by the different authors of the New Testament books - I remember coming away from it thinking that Paul's interpretation of Christianity was very different to, say, John's. So I don't think it's surprising that these "no true Scotsman" debates keep happening.

To declare my own bias, I'm not a follower of the teachings of either Jesus or Ayn Rand.

[Frelga]

In case you missed it - the GOP is trying to push through another version of its WealthCare reform. This one is designed to be more appealing to the Conservative wing, which the last time complained that, in effect, not enough people with preexisting conditions will die and women would still have some choices for reproductive health.

Once again, our only hope lies with the voters represented by Republicans calling their representatives.