Who Grants Life?

For years we have been hearing about the health-care crisis in the United States, and during every election cycle we visit the idea of a federally funded and/or regulated program that would, ideally, provide health insurance coverage or health-care to every member of our society. On the surface, this seems like a wonderful idea. We are told that a federal or national system of health-care would provide for every member of our society, no matter their financial or social status, to have access to doctors, hospitals, and long-term care facilities. The idea is that everyone will be afforded excellent medical care, and everyone will receive medical services. The implication is that it will not cost us for these services.

A national system of health-care, once you get into the nitty-gritty of how such a system must be administered, is actually a system that will deny health and life to the weakest and most oppressed individuals in our society and will not provide a way for ordinary citizens (it would, in all likely-hood, block any such attempt) to step-in and offer care and mercy like we see happen every day in our present "system." The administration and actual function of such a system precludes that we will receive poorer care, have to wait for care, or receive no care at all. It will not be you and your family determining your care. It will be your government who will do that.

The funding of such a system is never talked about, but, by definition, it must be funded by those of us who pay taxes and it cannot be supported by the present tax rate structure.

Yesterday, I heard a commentary that addresses a portion of this issue. Many European countries utilize some form of a government funded, socialistic health-care system. The following commentary takes a look at what is going on in a neighbor across "the pond."

A Demented Idea
By Chuck Colson
10/23/2008

Human Dignity on the Sceptred Isle

The Brits may be losing their marbles. The distinguished Baroness Warnock, labeled by the Daily Telegraph as Britain’s leading moral philosopher, ought to be ashamed of herself.

You see, Lady Warnock once chaired a government committee that helped legalize embryonic research. She’s known for supporting assisted suicide for people don’t want to burden their caregivers.

But now Lady Warnock has gone a step further. She says elderly people who suffer from dementia are “wasting people’s lives”—that is, the lives of those who care for them—and ought to choose to die even if they’re not suffering.

And even if they aren’t a burden on their families, they ought to “off” themselves anyway, as she puts it, because they’re a burden on the public, which, under British national health care, pays for their treatment. According to the Daily Telegraph, Warnock hopes people will soon be “licensed to put others down.”

Putting others down? That’s the kind of euphemism we use when talking about injured horses or sick dogs. It’s not how we talk about human beings—or at least, it’s not how we used to talk about them.

At age 84, Lady Warnock is old enough to remember Hitler’s Final Solution—and the thinking that drove the slaughter, not only of the Jews, but also of the handicapped, gypsies, and others the Nazis considered “defective” or “useless.”

But even though Lady Warnock should remember World War II, she evidently has forgotten its terrible lessons. Given her despicable recommendation for the elderly, she ought to hope that her memory issues aren’t related to dementia.

Thankfully, at least a few Brits are outraged by Warnock’s comments, calling them—in typical British understatement—both callous and deeply ignorant. Neil Hunt, a spokesman for the British Alzheimer’s Society, says to suggest that people with dementia “have some sort of duty to kill themselves is nothing short of barbaric.”

More ominously, a spokesman for a British right to life group said Warnock’s views “are an illustration that while euthanasia is promoted as a right to choose, it pretty rapidly becomes” an obligation to die.

This tale out of England is also a dire warning about what happens when countries nationalize health care. There’s never enough money to go around—and some bureaucrat at the top is always going to start making choices about who gets to live and who’s going to die. If those targeted for death don’t go willingly, well, they will need to be encouraged to die—or they might get a visit from someone “licensed to put others down.”

Has the Western world truly sunk this low? Do we ever need a more vivid reminder of the tremendous importance of worldview?

Either all human life—from unborn children to demented mothers and fathers—is created in the image of God and therefore infinitely precious, or humans are nothing but the result of mere chance, indistinguishable morally from a sand flea. The choice society makes will determine whether the most vulnerable among us will be respected and protected . . . or whether we will “put them down” when they become a burden.

We Christians must speak out as others—especially those in authority—move us closer and closer to compulsory killing.

If we do nothing, it’s evidence that perhaps we’ve all lost our marbles.

I am hoping we come to our senses, look at our socialistic neighbors on this continent and abroad, and really examine what it means when government becomes the benefactor of its citizens instead of the other way around.

Did we not leave the monarchies so that we could govern ourselves? Are not the immigrants of today choosing the United States because the United States allows choice and opportunity? Is it not the sole role of Yahweh to grant life and to take it away?

Taking a stand and remembering He who is my HOPE,

k8t

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