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Paying for Prayer
From the Los Angeles Times, here's the latest on the healthcare front:
Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.
The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R- Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy — both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist....The spiritual healing provision was introduced in the House by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), whose district includes a Christian Science school, Principia College.
I have a conflict of interest here since I come from a Christian Science background, but holy cow does this seem like a bad idea. Just a really, stupendously bad idea. It's true that not everything that seems like a slippery slope really is one, but this really is one. If it passes, can you imagine how this would play out among the Colorado Springs set within a few years? The mind reels.
The condition in which Mr.
The condition in which Mr. Kennedy finds himself at this time forces me to hold to myself any thoughts on his being a member of this trio, but boy, John Kerry is quite stupid.
No wonder an opponent as weak as GWB handed Kerry the ass of John Kerry on a silver platter.
O
As well, I am not sure I am
As well, I am not sure I am for a strict science based medicine regime as Atrios/Orac/LGM call for.
At some point, medicine should be between you and your licensed/regulated MD. And haven't we see medications/drugs/treatments removed over the years that were first scientifically shown to be best practice, and then scientifically shown to be harmful?
Right now, my kids can't get the orthotics they need because their insurance company assures us the treatment is experimental, all though many podiatrists say that that treatment hasn't been experimental for 20 years.
I don't know the answer, but I'd leave a nice fuzzy border between doctor and patient, and make science based studies of efficacy available, and prosecute fraud.
Maybe that's better as: "I
Maybe that's better as:
"I don't know the answer, but I'd place a nice fuzzy barrier between gov't and around doctor and patient, and make science based studies of efficacy available, and prosecute fraud."
Isn't your Christian Science
Isn't your Christian Science Healing session another name for placebo effect?
/honestly don't know.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/medicine/article6877064.ec...
"Thanks to its strong placebo effect, spiritual healing is available on the NHS to cancer patients"
Stupid Brits.
BEST IDEA *EVER*
This is an awesome idea!
I am starting a petition right away. I the undersigned support, no, demand prayer be included in every insurance package sold in the US. And I am not just talking health insurance, but car insurance, home insurance legal liability insurance.
There is one caveat: This assumes comparative treatment effectiveness research funding is included in the bill as well. Or forget that, in fact I demand that nationwide all those expensive and invasive treatments with possible side effect not be covered until after several months of side effect free prayer have been tried*. Even if the patient doesn`t survive this the prayer should be continued.... hey, if it worked for Jesus!
*) Side effect of prayer based medicine may include: death
And just think about what paid prayer would do for erectile dysfunction among the fundie crowd! Finally no more pain meds for Rush, and Glenn Beck doesn`t have to scare people about vaccines anymore.
And at $20 prayer is just incredibly cheap. With the money saved we could cure cancer in the secular world, and malaria in Africa all at the same time.
Do you feel lonely and unappreciated doing pointless work in your cubicle day after day month after month and year after year? Well just remember that in Utah people are getting paid for to pray for sick people.
Anyway, once we get to the Christian science churches I am pretty sure every interest group has been paid off and we should be seeing a pointless corporate/church welfare bill pass pretty soon. Yay capitalism.
Now from the people that brought you Faith based terrorism and faith based war planning comes an exciting new faith based initiative: faith based healthcare
And the best thing of it is: it wont cost me a single heathen tax Euro or insurance fee.
Wow, seems like that headline just dislodged some backed up snark, I wonder if there is a pill for that.
Requires them to "consider
Requires them to "consider it". Not great, but I'd be a lot more concerned if they actually required them to cover it,
Going to the grotto
tagged as:- solution
I'm Catholic, and I think this is a great idea. Next time I catch cold, I'm off to Lourdes!
The very cool part of
The very cool part of science based medicine is not the outlawing of spiritual healing. It's the destruction to modern obstetrics as home births will be mandated for safety and c-sections shunned for providing no benefit at all.
And thank g-d the government will be outlawing circumcision.
genital mutilation
Genital mutilation of children should be outlawed.
"It's the destruction to
"It's the destruction to modern obstetrics as home births will be mandated for safety and c-sections "
midwife-assisted births at home and at the hospital are apparently safer than ObGyn assisted births and have better outcomes and reduced costs and fewer unneeded surgeries like c-sections.
It will be hard to understand how modern obstetrics could survive legal/scientific assault by midwifes.
I like ObGyns
My wife tried to give birth with a midwife twice, and both times ended up having emergency c-sections.
I'm all for midwifes, but not all c-sections are unneeded. In fact, ObGyns saved my wife's life, twice.
That's sort of my point
That's sort of my point g.powell.
We talk how we're going to let medicine continue being between doctor and patient, and yet, then we start talking about how to restrict that to treatments WE approve of.
Here we see Kevin attacking placebos when it's long been known that placebos can be good medicine.
So what does that mean for circumcision, or for Viagra, or for midwives vs. ob/gyns?
At what point do the simpleton moralistic quants fuckheads like Duncan Black finally figure out that we don't want just one type superefficient and appropriately atheistic treatment for any given disease? That we want to encourage all sorts of lines of research and treatment?
Or maybe we don't?
There's a give and take there, but I wouldn't make throwing out placebos such an atheist scientists vs. the world affair. Of course where would the culture war be if we didn't do that?
I would not be quite so derisive as some commenters
tagged as:- result
Consider, if you will, that the placebo effect is in fact darn good medicine, and that some of our "more science-y" medications (including one that I took for a few years) turn out to be not ultimately helpful when health outcomes (heart attack, death) are the metrics (it's easier to measure blood cholesterol now than bad outcomes years later).
Consider also T.R. Reid's experience with his anecdotal shoulder injury. In the end, what worked best, was some somewhat flaky-sounding treatment in India.
Will conservatives scream
Will conservatives scream about their taxpayer money going to fund cults? Conservatives are willing to jettison healthcare reform because they don't want taxpayer funded abortion options in any form offered in any policy.
Seems a bit hypocritical, but it's religion we're talking about. Sigh.
Yes, but I'm absolutely
Yes, but I'm absolutely certain that this is the only bad idea in this 1900 page monstrosity...
1900 pages?
I really don't understand why the Right complains about the size of a 1900-page bill that fundamentally alters a large chunk of the economy. Compared to the task, that seems small to me.
These are the same guys who love the Laffer Curve that was drawn on a cocktail napkin and ended up injury our economy. Too bad that napkin wasn't thrown in the trash where it belonged.
Christian Science prayer treatments cost money?
Who performs the treatments, and how much do they cost? Does the money go to the pray-er, or the church, or what? How are the pray-ers qualified?
Voodoo
Can't believe so many commenters here are open to the idea of Voodoo medicine. This site must get a disproportionate amount of readers from California.
Sorry, couldn't resist a dig at the West Coast.
This is a California blog
Maybe you never noticed? Kevin's a resident of Irvine, California, home of UC Irvine, which has a medical school.
Also, there's a big difference between alternative medicine, which may be homeopathic or herbal or Asian, and voodoo medicine which involves witch doctors and things. You're more likely to find the voodoo variety in the bayous of Louisiana and Mississippi than in California. Neither of these is prayer-based - for that you'll have to get yourself to the Bible belt. But whatever.
Christian Science is prayer
Christian Science is prayer based, isn't it?
As for alternative medicine, herbal etc., if it isn't based on the scientific method, then it's magical thinking as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure some folk and alternative practices have scientific explanations, but that would integrate them into the mainstream.
By the way, I know where Kevin is based, but I wouldn't call this a California blog. Local issue are rarely discussed here.
I'm not a user of alternative medicines
but I am aware that herbs form the basis for some treatments of long-standing, and that many alternative medicines have been subjected to scientific testing in recent years, which have found them to be surprisingly effective. Medicine wasn't born out of science - it grew up around traditional treatments. Your anxiety regarding the scientific method should not translate to opposition to any treatment that wasn't produced by the industrial-pharmaceutical complex. Aspirin existed long before Plavix came along, and it's still an effective first line of defense against blood clots.
As to the 'California-ness' of the blog - it's a blog about national issues, approached from a California point of view.
I actually agree with you on
I actually agree with you on all points. And neing a NYer, it's nice to get a West Coast point of view on national issues.
(I'd think there might have
(I'd think there might have been a few less anonymous comments if the MoJo editor allowed editing for say 15 minutes after a post had been entered.)
they do
It might even last for more than 15 minutes. Just click on "edit," which you'll find beneath your comment.
I submit that it's NOT
I submit that it's NOT really a conflict of interest if you speak out unequivocally against that interest!
two conclusive reasons this is a bad idea
There are two conclusive reasons this is a bad idea:
--It puts the government in the business of directly supporting religious activities. We won't let churches give food to the homeless if they also hand out pamphlets, but we will pay them to pray?
--Prayer doesn't work. It doesn't make sick people better. It doesn't work instead of medicine, and it doesn't help in addition to medicine. One of the ways health care reform is supposed to save money by not paying for procedures that don't work, so we have more money for things that do work. This proposal to pay for prayer is an utter waste of money, an intellectual fraud, and just a way to funnel federal money to churches.
I wonder how they're going to distinguish between "good religions" (i.e., those that whites engage in) and "bad religions" (i.e., those that brown people or poor people or extremely non-Christian people engage in). I can just see a Santoria or Zoroastrian priest billing Blue Cross for dead chickens. That will be fun to watch.
Or even better, Church of Universal Life ministers can start a side job of praying over people. You could do a whole hospital ward at a time, or hell, if you're working from home, you could pray for the whole country, all the sick people at once.
Okay, that's far fetched, but I'll bet ministers, legitimate and otherwise, do find ways to scam this in very unChristian, Jewish, Muslim, Santorian, and Zoroastrian ways. I imagine evangelical megachurches bussing in thousands of people with insurance cards and praying over them all at once. I wonder if insurers would offer different rates if you pray over more than 1000 people at a time.
CDRealist@blogspot.com
the argument
I'm an agnostic social scientist and no fan of Christian Science, but here's the argument as I understand it: Many Christian Scientists have health insurance, either because it's required by their school or workplace, or because in the case of emergency (car wreck, etc.) they might not be in a position to refuse medical treatment and w/o health insurance would still be stuck with the bill. At the same time, they have to pay Christian Science practioners out-of-pocket, and while they aren't as expensive as doctors, they aren't cheap. (Don't know the specifics, just saw a friend's bill once.) Having insurance cover the cost or part of it couldn't be that expensive for the companies, might get more Christian Scientists to buy health insurance thus expanding the pool of low-cost insureds, and doesn't seem that different to me than covering psychotherapy. I'm not convinced this is a good idea, but it's worthy of reasoned argument and not just snark.
Money for what?
I didn't know that Christian Scientist paid for people to pray for their health. I'm entirely ignorant about this issue, but that seems very strange to me. What exactly are they paying for? And why do they want me to pay for it?
That Democrats are
That Democrats are supporting this is very, very disappointing.
the Church of Latter Day Beats
Christian Scientists have a significant population in Massachusetts. Kerry is their senator. Hatch, on the other hand, represents a state entirely captured by an institutionalized religion, so his support is probably conditional for support of some exemption for the Church of Latter Day Saints.
As stated above, in MA Christian Scientists have to purchase health insurance, the mandate part of Obama's plan, despite belonging to a religion that rejects scientific medicine. Since Christian Scientists are forced to purchase health insurance, it makes sense that it should also cover what they consider to be health care.
No, national health
No, national health insurance should pay for what the state considers to be healthcare, not the individual. Hell, I've paid for tons of foreign policy blunders that I didn't believe in.
I thought the science deniers were all on the other side.
Wait a minute. Wasn't a
Wait a minute. Wasn't a Christian Science family just charged--and I believe convicted--for child abuse, or maybe manslaughter, for not getting medical treatment for a child that they had prayed over? Are we going to have the left hand of the government giving out money to a practice the right hand says in criminal neglect?
The Christian Science church
The Christian Science church has a good deal of children's blood on its hands. A good source of information on this is at http://www.childrenshealthcare.org/. The legal issues have been murky, though--some parents have been prosecuted and convicted, others convicted and then cleared on a technicality, and others have been found not guilty because their state laws basically protect prayer-based medical care (or, as you might call it, prayer-based child neglect). These state laws have been entirely the work of Christian Science lobbyists swaying their legislatures, so the CSers have afforded legal protection to all sorts of snake-handling sects in addition to their own more "respectable" members.
The Supreme Court has stated--in a case not involving Christian Scientists--that parents do not have the right to make "religious martyrs" out of their children, but somehow that idea has not filtered down very far into the various states' laws surrounding child abuse and neglect when it comes to substituting prayer for medical care.
Christian Science vs other religions
If you are a Christian then don't you believe that Jesus healed people? Don't you believe that he rose from the dead on Easter Sunday?
However, it is not OK to think that God could heal you today? Is prayer completely worthless? Is religion completely worthless?
Frankly, as a Reformed Jew, I have different views than most Christians. However, I don't see much difference between going to a Christian Science practioner and going to confession and asking people to pray for you.
You miss the point. I'm not
You miss the point. I'm not a believer, but I bet Christians don't believe that Jesus charged a fee for his services. Certainly the Roman Empire didn't reimburse him.
Separation of church and state is fundamental. If people want to go to faith healers, fine. I just don't want to know about it.
So this is what the doctored
So this is what the doctored witch doctor photos were about.
Drugs and devices have to go
Drugs and devices have to go through clinical trials to demonstrate their safety and efficacy before they are legible for reimbursement. Surgical procedures and prayer don't, their lobbies evidently have more clout.
How much angst am I going to
How much angst am I going to cause when I tell you that Medicare already covers this to some degree? Basically, there are these CS "sanatoriums" (probably in MA) that provide whatever it is that CS considers "treatment." It's not like you get paid to pray, exactly, but to stay in one of these places, IF you have a diagnosis for something that it covers.
My great aunts converted to CS -- my mother said that it had the same cachet in or around 1910 that various "new" or newly discovered (to us) religious traditions have, like Buddhism or crystals or Wiccanism. It appealed to whatever side of them had been disaffected by traditional Christian doctrines. The one was a lot more dogmatic than the other.
Mostly, it caused them (as well as others I have known) to ignore looming health catastrophes, like tumors, until it was too late to do much.
I believe this is a good
I believe this is a good policy if it will allow me to purchase a pray circle when I am fighting the insurance company.
Looking forward to using HCRA dollars for the collection basket for the St. Blaise mass.