I don’t think the scriptures would want us to let the government be in control of our bodys. The mass buaracy the government creates to take on the health care issue would make Joseph Smith turn on his heals. Do you believe that Joseph Smith would have handed over his and his followers money to the government and said ok now you can take care of us. He left because they wouldn’t let him teach his beliefs to the people that wanted to hear. Mr Obama’s plan is a way to apease the masses for the moment. Our country and beliefs are bigger and stronger than they ever have been.

I watched the original new broadcast of the moon landing last night just like many others, I was brought to tears by the way our country has changed over the last 40 years. We all need to be involved in our contry and our neighborhoods. It isn’t fair that a few have to take care of the ones who don’t want to work or don’t want to take responsibilty for their actions. I am so tired of way we have let our thoughts be reshaped. It is not ok that a woman I met in Wisconsin hasn’t ever gotten any money from her childs father, even though he is court ordered to do so. Or the woman in Nevada who has to chase down her ex-husband once a year to get money for son, and when she catches him on the phone he can’t understand why she is so hostile and mean.

This is what we have let happen and this rules for radicals idealisms have got to stop. You may not want to see it but everything this man is doing is driving the nail in the coffin of our former beliefs. I didn’t have healthcare for most of my life.I had a doctor, I had to get rounds of shots that my mother paid for. I was born with a hip disorder and had to have my hips broke and reset at 1 year old. I had to wear a body cast for 3 months and had to have it replaced once. All this my mother paid for out of her own pocket. When I got older my mom told me if you ever get real sick go get into your car and run it into a tree because we have hospital coverage on our auto insurance. That was the joke in our house and luckily we never had to use it,Because we never had a bad auto wreck.

There weren’t many of us yet we helped each other. We lived together if we needed to we shared a car and cut each others hair.
This healthcare bill is saying that we don’t help our own and we have to have the government take care of us. We have to change the way our insurance companys do business, yes but we need to help each other.
I have had family get help from the church and when they were back on their feet they paied it back and then some. You see when you get help form somebody you know cares about you, you want to pay it back as soon as you can. It gives you pride of getting things back together. If you get “Free” you don’t have that same need to pay it back. Our youth need to learn that. Most kids today have a sense of entitalment towards everything. If we are going to have enough Doctors and Nurses in out future they need to want to give back. Not for the money, but because they are free to be the kind of doctor they want to be.

You are right that the church teaches that self-sufficiency is important. However, it also teaches that we should help those who are suffering. In fact, a major reason the church emphasizes self-sufficiency is because that’s the only way you can be able to help others who are not (yet) self-sufficient. As the original post made clear, the Book of Mormon teaches that we should help people even when we think their suffering is their own fault. That seems to conflict with your view that we should only share with those that “share in the work”. This also ignores the many people who are sick through no fault of their own, and thus can’t find affordable health insurance. Jesus, and Joseph Smith, did not tell the sick to “take care of it yourself”. They took them in and helped them.

As I said in a previous comment, the issue isn’t whether we should help the poor. The scriptures, and the light of Christ, make clear that of course we should. The issue is whether the government should be the means by which we do it. Certainly private charity would be preferable, but what are we to do when there there is not enough private charity, or when private charities cannot organize themselves sufficiently to meet the need? And it should be noted that the government is an extension of society, and so government funding of health-care could be viewed as just a more organized method of collective charity (I’m not making that argument, but I think that’s a legitimate discussion to be had). Like I said before, I can’t find anything in the scriptures that says yeah or nay on that issue. 4th Nephi gives an example of a society where the poor are taken care of, but is silent on how that was actually implemented. So let’s debate that issue on its merits and not pretend that our way is anointed way.

What I do hear him say is:

Government cannot and should not do YOUR job of looking after yourself.
Government should not forcibly take your livelyhood (money) to give to others.

That is not charity and love. That is forced servitude. It is not the the plan of free agency. You cannot force someone to be loving. This is exactly why taxation past our own national protection should be strictly limited.

I’ve looked at the economic systems of the most opposing ideologies of government and found a something very simple…

Capitalism = privately owned / privately controlled
Socialism = government owned / government controlled
Fascism = privately owned / government controlled

Now there is one missing that has not been on the Earth for very long periods of time. That is, Government owned/ privately controlled. Do you understand why? Because it is the United Order. You have the body of the Church granting you your stewardship freedom to increase your talents. The city of Enoch did this. New Jerusalem will do this. This is a simple explanation but it works. It can also be said to be a capitalistic system working within a social system.

Mr. Beck is not denouncing the Church’s teachings. He is trying to slowly get us back to a less intrusive government. You know, like our founding fathers intended.

But, the government can’t do anything right.

Let’s also not forget about putting all our insurance under ONE provider. You’re basicly creating a government monopoly. The government has already inserted itself so far into our current medical system that the red tape you have to go through now is almost unbearable. Imagine a government national healthcare run like FEMA or the IRS.

The federal government is supposed to be the LEAST amount of interference in our lives with the smaller states and local government being the bulk of the laws and governance, not the other way around. We have fed the monster until it won’t go away and now you want to feed it even more. It makes no sense.

Richard M

As is clear from my previous comments, I’m as against government run health-care as much as you, but I disagree with you on one point:

No where does the Lord tell us to create a government program to help others, he tells US to do it.

While technically true, it should be pointed out that when Christ taught the sermon on the mount, he was teaching a minority people. Now we live in a nation that is predominantly Christian. What would the Lord have said to a king if that king believed him and wanted to incorporate his teachings into the governing of the kingdom? I have no idea, and as I said before, you can’t use scripture to argue for or against government run healthcare.

But on your greater point that it is our responsibility to help the poor, I agree.

The answer is always WE THE PEOPLE.

Every time I serve, I learn and I SEE. My eyes are open to the need around me. I have never noticed the need around us on April 15th. Instead I see waste. No where does the Lord tell us to create a government program to help others, he tells US to do it.

Need is not just about those we take time to serve. The Lord knows it is about us as well. Many of us, and I include myself in this, are in need of more empathy and greater spiritual vision. I find by helping others personally, they help me. It is the same principle I find to be so true every time I do my home teaching.

gb

If you were to apply this to the good we could do by paying taxes for universal health care, one could also say that every church member should sponsor an orphan in Guatemala, pay for AIDS medication for an African child or take in a homeless person into our home. Most of us have not felt the hunger of a missed meal because we gave away our only food. Most of us have not gone naked because we gave away our only clothing. We would however, feel the effects of universal health care chipping away the level of health care we currently enjoy. There would not be enough funding to go around to meet the needs that would arise in the USA if we selected that course.

There is another socialized medical system besides the VA. It is the Indian Health Service. Waits for appointments are similar to what was described happening in Sweden. Facilities are often outdated and political saavy rather than true need often awards the rare funding for a new facility. The physicians and nurses that choose to work in this system are, with rare exception, hard working and dedicated, cramming as much into one day as possible. When the annually funded budget money runs low, orders for screening mammograms, knee replacements, and other procedures that are not critcal get deferred until the next budget year.

The other element which is sometimes seen with this, and other, socialized systems is the sense of entitlement. Patients have no penalty for using the Emergency room (a more expensive and critical resource), so the ER is used for spurious reasons: getting tylenol for free instead of going to the store to buy it; a parent bringing their teen to the ER requesting a “check to see if they are still a virgin” when there was no assault, bringing their AFLAC paperwork to the ER for a 2 week old injury that did not require an ER visit so they can get their benefit paid.

Free medication does not have the same value as it does when it costs. Stockpiles of unused medications can exist in homes because a doctor prescribed it. The patient did not agree with the doctor and never planned to use it, but took the medication anyway because it was free.

Even ambulance service has been abused because no cost was associated with it. One person who had no transportation to the clinic called an ambulance because of a sore throat. Others who needed a ride to town from an outlying area would call the ambulance and then take off after they arrived.

What about the rising costs of health care in general? New arthritis medicines cost thousands of dollars over a year. Should universal health care cover these medications which can reduce symptoms by 70%, but increase the individual’s health expenses by 700%?

Nobody wants an ill person to die because they do not have insurance, but costs provide a necessary deterrent to abuse of limited health resources. Even Massachusett’s universal health care system was criticized because it required those who could afford health insurance to buy it. It was politically unpopular and downplayed by the Romney campaign. Those kind of teeth are necessary in this day and age.

By comparison, when I take the depositions of orthopedic surgeons just out of residency, they are typically making 2-3 million dollars a year.

If you give the insurance company $100 for health care, they’ll keep $30 and put $70 to use providing care.

And because they made that $30, other people want to get in on it and start moving their own companies into the insurance business, which creates more competition, which encourages companies to cut their prices by either taking less profit or encouraging the medical community to find more efficient ways to do things that cost less. What your comparison leaves out is that because of the competition of the free-market, the $70 the insurance companies pays might go further than the $95 dollars the government pays in a single-payer system where there is no incentive to cut costs and become more efficient, since there is no competition. What we need is more competition, not less.

There will be plenty of controls and oversight to be sure that our sacred health care dollars will be spent providing health care for us.

I’m sure that’s what they said about social security. How long will it be before the government starts “borrowing” from the pot of money in the single-payer system? Just because it’s in the bill doesn’t mean it’s going to happen the way they want it to. Once healthcare is no longer a hot issue, legislatures will do what they want with that money to fund the next big thing. I wouldn’t mind the single-payer system if I had more faith in the government to do what is right rather than what will get them elected.

I don’t mean to come down so hard on the single-payer idea. I’m actually not against it as much as some conservatives. Just to prove I’m not a mindless conservative (I am conservative, just not mindless, to be clear), I do think that there does need to be some government subsidies to help those who are too poor to afford insurance, or who have medical conditions that are not the result of their own bad choices and therefore have a harder time getting insurance. The government could give tax credits to insurance companies for every poor person they insure on a sliding scale, or for someone they insure with such a medical condition, which would bring down prices for both groups. That can be combined with tax credits for the very poor so that perhaps they wouldn’t have to pay for insurance at all. We can restructure the tax code so that it will be revenue nuetral for both the government and the insurance companies, which would just mean that the rich would have to pay a bit more for insurance since the insurance companies would have more of an incentive to cover the poor and sick than they currently do. In a sense we’re making it profitable for insurance companies to make their products accessible (which means cheaper) to the poor.

And I do support some limited regulation (a naughty word for hard-line conservatives) for insurance companies to cover important care, and more importantly to be clear about what they don’t cover and what they do so that the consumer can make an informed choice. Regulation needs to be limited in order to promote more competition, however.

Over time I have come to favor a blended solution where government steps in and simply states that insurance companies must offer a global rate to EVERYONE.

I agree with your point that we should try to find a way to help the poor. I don’t think there’s a debate there. But what do you mean by this comment? Do you mean that everyone should have the same rate, regardless of health? Should an insurance company be forced to give a smoker the same rate as he gives me? Or are you just saying that big businesses should not be given a better deal than small businesses? I strongly disagree with the former, but somewhat agree with the latter. Some regulation is necessary, but this strikes me as over-regulation, and if we’re going to go this far then we’ve destroyed to incentive for the private market to offer insurance in the first place, and you might as well just have the government supply it.

The biggest problem is that the insurance companies, who add NO value to actual medical care, keep billions (Billions!)of our health care dollars for themselves.

They don’t add value to medical care, but they definately add value to people’s lives in general. They add the value of allowing people who otherwise would have no way to pay for care for catastrophic events to be able to afford them by assuming the risk on the company instead of on an individual. Risk is something that a company can deal with when mitigated diversified risk. But risk can destroy an individual. So I’d say that’s valuable.

No more having bean counters at the big, wasteful, bureaucratic insurance companies telling you “Denied” to tests and procedures and medicines that your doctor knows you need. Health care will be back in the hands of those who are the medical experts, your doctor.

I agree that the insurance system needs reforming to minimize cases where people are denied for care that they need and are legimately covered for, but are you suggesting that this pool of money you are talking about should be accessible by doctors without accountability? If the doctor says you need the test, and you get it, the doctor can then reach his hand into the pot and take out the money to pay for the procedure (including compensation for himself)? This seams like a recipe for disaster in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying doctors are crooks any more than anyone else. But any system where poeple have access to money without accountability is bound to be taken advantage of. There needs to be someone in the position of reviewing the necessity and yes, in some cases, denying coverage for unnecessary procedures. I’d even rather see the government overseeing it than no one.

I think the free market is, hypothetically, a good way to make that oversight happen because you have an incentive on both sides. The doctor has the incentive to provide good care, so that he will get paid. The insurance company has the incentive to make sure they’re not paying for unnecessary procedures, but also has the incentive to pay for necessary procedures because if it doesn’t, people will switch insurance companies. But of course, in practice, there are many flaws to how this works that need to be fixed. But I disagree with both your solutions in #35 and #38.

Jeff (#36), what day was this on? If it was recent it might be on my DVR. (Yes, I just admitted that I TIVO Glenn Beck)

“Translation: Conservatives believe in feeding and caring for the poor, so long as someone ELSE does it.”

Please stop with the ad hominem attacks on conservatives. It seems like many liberals feel a need to justify their policy choices by characterizing conservatives as uncaring and hateful.

This common stereotype of conservatives that they care less about the poor and donate less of their time and money is quite false. The opposite is, in fact, true. Liberals give less to charity, based on just about every sort of measure: money (conservatives give 30% more–they give more to both religious and secular charities than liberals), time, even blood (18% more likely to give blood); in fact, of the 25 states where people give an above-average percentage of their income to charity, 24 were red states that voted for Bush in the last election. Most of this data is based on a study done by a Syracuse University professor who has registered in the past as both a Democrat and Republican and considers himself an independent (so less likelihood of bias either way).

Some examples:

Scientific American:
Bowling for God

“On the other hand, Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks argues in Who Really Cares (Basic Books, 2006) that when it comes to charitable giving and volunteering, numerous quantitative measures debunk the myth of “bleeding heart liberals” and “heartless conservatives.” Conservatives donate 30 percent more money than liberals (even when controlled for income), give more blood and log more volunteer hours. In general, religious people are more than three times more generous than secularists to all charities, 14 percent more munificent to nonreligious charities and 57 percent more likely than a secularist to help a homeless person.”

See also: ABC News: Who Gives and Who Doesn’t?

Long waits for appointments is the anecdotal experience in Sweden, but I think that is not characteristic of all socialized health care systems. I lived in Japan for two years and you could get an appointment quite quickly there. On the other hand, sometimes patients have to wait months for apppointments in the USA. No matter what you think of Michael Moore, you should watch his movie, “Sicko.” It’s very instructive on this issue.

As for the Mormon view of taking money by force from people to care for the poor as being wrong, the Lord states that the world is in sin because there are those who possess more than others. Thus, to be wealthy and not share your wealth is to steal from the Lord. To tax citizens seeking to even the playing field and take care of our elderly and orphans etc, surely is not an abomination in the sight of the Lord.

It is undeniable that our present health care system is failing us. The biggest problem is that the insurance companies, who add NO value to actual medical care, keep billions (Billions!)of our health care dollars for themselves. They need to be cut out of the system freeing up that money so that it can then go towards covering all of us.

Instead of paying premiums to the private insurers, we pay into a health care trust fund. When we need care, we go to the doctor of our choice and the hospital of our choice. The doc and the hospital get paid out of that trust fund. This is single-payer. It will work for us. We already have the infrastructure. We just shift where the money comes from.

No more having bean counters at the big, wasteful, bureaucratic insurance companies telling you “Denied” to tests and procedures and medicines that your doctor knows you need. Health care will be back in the hands of those who are the medical experts, your doctor.

This is what we need. And some politicians are already working on bills that would provide such a system for us. In California it’s SB 840. In Congress it is John Conyers (Michigan) HR676.

I looked on the CNN website for a transcript of Beck’s exact words, but couldn’t find it. Too bad — he was quite eloquent in his thoughts. He just happens to be, regularly, wrong .

I’m not really a liberal. I have some conservative thoughts, and most of my views are sufficiently nuanced to make all my friends go mad.

I continue to believe that King Benjamin’s speech will continue to challenge the political and social views of many Mormons.

Hear me out, please, because this is ALMOST as hot of a topic as Same sex marriage, but I think I’ve got a better handle on this one (rather than that one, where I don’t think we can have a workable solution from the government).

First, I absolutely feel that Universal Health Care as promised by certain political candidates is a disaster. As someone earlier noted, while it works in other countries, it often works by people avoiding appointments and just showing up at the ER. Why? Because you can’t get an appointment for 6 months. Well, many problems are NOW, and won’t WAIT that long. Unfortunately.

So, any plan we implement has to avoid that pitfall. But it won’t. If a country the size of Sweden can’t make it work, a country that is MUCH bigger and more densely populated is going to have more problems, not less.

Arguments about morality are rather moot. Look, I absolutely agree with the point of view that it is, on some levels, somewhat immoral to overtax the people. The scriptures (especially the Book of Mormon) are replete with warnings about this (one of the great sins of King Noah? Taking a MERE one FIFTH! 20% of the peoples income! A LOT of people would be delighted with this situation). On the contrary, I also completely agree that it is deplorable that any society would allow those who are unable to pay for medical treatment to suffer. Regardless of why they cannot pay. Think about it. A man who works very hard every day of his life building homes for someone, is extremely skilled as a laborer, and then is diagnosed with cancer is not going to be able to pay the bills on his own. If he is lucky enough to work for a large construction company that can pay for good medical insurance, then he _might_ be covered.

Knowing what I know about genetics, inborn ability, environmental predisposition, etc., I cannot say that everyone has the ability in life to earn enough money to make it in life to the point where they can cover their own medical expenses.

So, can we all agree on that? If so, then lets move on. Some people can cover their own expenses many times over, some people cannot.

So then, there are essentially three methods of handling this situations, which is this: we need, as a society, to cover those who do not have the means to pay for their own medical bills, regardless of what they are, including (and I am absolutely adamant about this) quality dental care (because I need about 10k of dental I can’t afford!).

First, and this is what many liberals, including two presidential candidates, wish to do, we could implement a government controlled, tax-payer funded system of health-care. This could take many forms, but most would be mandatory participation in terms of insurance.

Second would be a form of private business backed system. This is what some conservatives favor, but has not evolved.

Third would be a completely charity based system. This is what some other conservatives favor, and has also not evolved.

Of course what we have now is that a lot of people simply are not covered.

Or, if they are, they are not covered adequately. My brother, who makes a reasonable amount of money, avoids the doctor as much as possible simply because of the cost because he owns his own business and cannot get the same type or rates on insurance as a much larger company could.

Over time I have come to favor a blended solution where government steps in and simply states that insurance companies must offer a global rate to EVERYONE. Thus, those who own small businesses or were otherwise self-employed could still afford the same level of insurance that I enjoy (which is QUITE good).

To cover those who still could not afford insurance, or who were otherwise uninsured, hospitals would be encouraged to operate on the St. Jude method–setting up large donation funds to which individuals and organizations could easily donate, knowing that those funds would go to cover the cost of paying for health care. At the end of each year, a third of the fund (or some other amount) would be used to reduce the amount that was needed to be charged to the insurance companies, so that those companies could reduce the cost of their insurance.

Is this plan perfect? No, but it would offer some level of government oversight, without the government actually running the health-care system, which I think is essential to success in the USA. It would also offer a method of allowing those who want to donate money to those who need health-care to do so. It would care for those who could not afford insurance, it would allow those who could afford insurance to do so without being placed in a bind because they do not happen to be affiliated with a company with thousands of employees (and thus large collective bargaining power).

I’m sure people will spot flaws in my reasoning, and I really don’t mind. What I want to do is point out that we do need a change. I think that both conservatives and liberals agree on that. The solution is the difference. Both truly want the poor to be cared for (for the most part–there are some conservatives who don’t care, but they are unworthy of the name, and I hope that Glenn Beck is not really among that camp), but some feel that the role of government should be more limited. I tend to feel that in most cases government should be limited, but this is a case where the current system is plainly failing and we must change it. I will not accept that the liberal solution is the only or best solution, but neither will I accept that we must rely only on charity. I think a combination of charity, private business and government regulation can achieve the desired goal of caring for the poor and needy while not imposing an undue or immoral burden on the rest of society, thus allowing everyone their agency, and the opportunity to receive greater blessings by choosing to assist those in need. And I believe that they will. I know that I would as I am able.