Senate health-care bill would cover prayer-based treatments
With all due respect to the Christian Science Church, this is a bad idea:
“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 measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments — which substitute for or supplement medical treatments — on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against “religious and spiritual healthcare.”
It would have a minor effect on the overall cost of the bill — Christian Science is a small church, and the prayer treatments can cost as little as $20 a day. But it has nevertheless stirred an intense controversy over the constitutional separation of church and state, and the possibility that other churches might seek reimbursements for so-called spiritual healing.”
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305 comments Add your comment
Stan
November 3rd, 2009
4:48 pm
Call your Congressman and Senators and DEMAND that vote against this bill! This is a horrible idea! This sounds like something W would have tried to sneak through!
Note: I’m against this health insurance reform thing anyway but this is as good a reason to get in a twist as any
Paul
November 3rd, 2009
4:51 pm
There go those liberal Democrats, imposing their religious agenda on the rest of us!
//sarc//
Maybe this is being done to define the boundaries of church-state support or cooperation?
Or maybe some see it as part of nontraditional medicine that can have a place in efficacious treatment?
Matilda
November 3rd, 2009
4:55 pm
I have two issues with this: (1) I thought prayer was supposed to be given freely out of love, not sold as a service or commodity, and (2) If your child is lapsing into a diabetic coma, and instead of rushing her to the hospital, you gather the neighbors and pray over her, and she dies from lack of treatment (true story), I hope you rot in jail, you sanctimonious freak. But that’s just my opinion. Not judging.
Brad Steel
November 3rd, 2009
4:55 pm
All the respect due to Christian Science health care is none. But $20/day will keep be a great deal for the insurance companies – low cost treatment that likely ends in death.
Certainly, this provision was drafted by the insurance lobby.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
4:57 pm
Wait a minute…
wasn’t the curtain torn? I don’t get billed for my prayers.
Paul
November 3rd, 2009
5:00 pm
@@
You didn’t get billed? Once I was asked to lead a prayer at church. The minister made sure I paid for it…
Common Sense
November 3rd, 2009
5:01 pm
I “pray” this bill doesn’t pass.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:03 pm
Promoting Christian Science quackery as clinical medicine is a reprehensibly stupid idea, and note that the Christian Scientists bestow royalty on people like Cruz and Trevolta who give them millions.
That’s what Conference is for–hopefully to strip out stupidity but often it doesn’t.
One of the most important aspects of the final House Bill is that unlike the Senate bill it stands up to the pharmaceutical bills and puts Rahm Emanuel’s egregiously stupid deal with Big Pharma in the dumpster where it belongs. The House Bill adopted Waxman’s promise to fix the egregious crapfest GOP led by Dr. Bill Frist passed in 2003. It would force Big Pharma to pay $140 million, but it has the provision the pharmaceuticals and their hookers all fear–it would close the Medicare Part D Donut with new rebates to cut prices for low income seniors and would stop the egregious GOP provision that forces seniors to pay the full cost of their meds when they reach $2700 until they get to $6100. The result is that a high percentage of seniors go without vital medication for serious chronic diseases like congestive heart failure, asthma, and angina.
The House Bill would close this Medicare Part D donut but unfortunately not until 2019 which by my calculation is ten years from now.
Most importantly, the House Bill would do what Big Pharma fought tooth and nail. It would put Medicare on the road to solvency instead of being in the red in about 7-8 years because it would allow competitive bidding for drugs by Medicare just like Emory Health Care and Piedmont Hospital do it via consortium. Hopefully this will survive Conference.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
5:04 pm
Paul:
Was it an intercessory prayer for the minister. My minister, a really good sport, asked if I wanted to lead a committee in prayer once. “No thanks! I do mine in the closet.” was my reply.
jewcowboy
November 3rd, 2009
5:04 pm
I need quite a bit of retail therapy. If I get someone ordained by a church to agree, can I get reimbursed for the recent therapy I had at Theory and Barney’s?
jewcowboy
November 3rd, 2009
5:06 pm
Brad Steele,
“low cost treatment that likely ends in death.
Certainly, this provision was drafted by the insurance lobby.”
Is the healthcare plan the Republicans were holding up during Obama’s healthcare speech to Congress?
I Report (-: You Whine )-: Ate Up With Envy mmm, mmmm, mmmmm!
November 3rd, 2009
5:07 pm
I think bookman could use a few prayer treatments.
No matter who pays for them.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:09 pm
Real Case Horror Stories going on now: Stories of Struggle http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/02/health/INSURANCE_VOICES.html?ref=health
Much of the debate about health care reform focuses on people who don’t have insurance. But as Karen Barrow explores during the latest Patient Voices series, even people with insurance coverage are struggling with bills, confusing policies and red tape.
Six men and women share their experiences with health coverage and insurance issues. You’ll meet Tasha Huebner, 41, who found dealing with the insurance company worse than dealing with breast cancer. “With insurance, it was always a big surprise, what are they going to deny next?” she says.
Once she called her insurance company to find out why a $5,000 surgery bill had been denied. She was told it was because she had one too many nurses in the operating room during her surgery. “At that point I hung up on my insurance representative that I was talking to,” she says. “I didn’t even know what to do with that.”
Zoraida Reyes, 46, is a small business owner who was forced to cut health insurance, including her own. “I work six days a week, and I can’t afford insurance,” she says. “You can imagine the people who have a lot less than me, they’re probably worse off.”
And there’s Carl Arrington, 58, who lost his health insurance after his Internet company closed. Instead of paying for health insurance, he decided to invest in his health, changing his diet and exercising more. “If you’re in your 50s or 60s and you don’t have medical insurance and you don’t get it through your employer, it’s going to cost you two or three thousand dollars a month. With that kind of money I could see a doctor every week.”
Adrienne Schroeder, 31, has high-deductible health insurance through her husband’s job but is saddled with medical debt as a result of four pregnancies in six years, including two that ended in miscarriages. “Since we have insurance we should not be worried about having a baby or having a miscarriage and be stressed about how long it takes to pay it off,” she says. “Our daughter is near 18 months, and we’re nowhere near paying off these hospital bills.”
To hear these and other stories about health care coverage problems, listen to the full multimedia feature, “Patient Voices: Coping With, and Without, Insurance.”
Jay
November 3rd, 2009
5:10 pm
Option, I think you’ve confused Scientologists with Christian Scientists.
They are two very different groups.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:11 pm
GOP’s Boehner says that news flash: He will come up with a “plan.” It used to be you’d look to comedians to provide the humor. Now the GOP has morphed into one big Comedy GOP central.
Paul
November 3rd, 2009
5:12 pm
@@
Naw, was just a wisecrack.
But I did mention once, when they were having a ruckus here over prayers at football game, what the reaction would be if the student began praying “O Mighty Odin, Give us your power to destroy our enemies…” or maybe if they wanted to sacrifice a goat or something.
Gov’t Option
{{Promoting Christian Science quackery as clinical medicine is a reprehensibly stupid idea}}
I’m trying to figure out, are you a liberal or a conservative? Can’t quite put my finger on the open-minded, accepting, live and let live aspects -
jewcowboy
November 3rd, 2009
5:13 pm
“is saddled with medical debt as a result of four pregnancies in six years, including two that ended in miscarriages”
Condoms are cheaper than having children as are vastectomy’s.
Shawny
November 3rd, 2009
5:14 pm
The govt cant do anything right. This is one example of tons that have now driven this bill to the north side of a trillion dollars. Stop it. It is bad, and we do not need this type of healthcare “reform”.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
5:14 pm
jay, you were pretty eager to expose this little detail in the bill. Got anymore you’d like to supply? Some of the hairballs belonging to the dems, maybe?
Cough ‘em up, jay!
jewcowboy
November 3rd, 2009
5:16 pm
“The govt cant do anything right”
I like that screwball plan of the Interstate Highway System…that turned out pretty well.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
5:18 pm
Cough ‘em up, jay!
I’ll hold.
Paul
November 3rd, 2009
5:18 pm
@@
[[Some of the hairballs belonging to the dems, maybe?]]???
Uh, check the names of the cosponsors. And check the political affiliation of those who voted for it.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:18 pm
Yes you are 100% correct Jay. My bad. Ron Hubbard’s fakes vs. Mary Baker Eddy’s.
Christian Scientists believe that any medical condition can be healed by prayer theoretically. While they don’t explicitly forbid medical treatment they strongly try to displace it with prayer. Much of what happens depends on the individual Christian Scientist–some will accept medical treatment along with praying.
I don’t know if there have been series matching particular diagnoses with choices made by Christian Scientists, but I’d be surprised if there hadn’t.
Kamchak
November 3rd, 2009
5:20 pm
But I did mention once, when they were having a ruckus here over prayers at football game, what the reaction would be if the student began praying “O Mighty Odin, Give us your power to destroy our enemies…” or maybe if they wanted to sacrifice a goat or something.
I would have no problem with that–if the prayer and sacrifice was performed far enough in advance of the game to allow for a sufficient marinade.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
5:21 pm
Tit for tat, Paul.
‘Kay ‘Kay.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
5:25 pm
ChattyWick:
I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Gettin’ it in is only half the battle. Gettin’ it right? That’s what matters.
jewcowboy
November 3rd, 2009
5:25 pm
You’re right Kamchack,
Don’t they do that already, but its a cow and pig. But really who knows what are in hot dogs. It could be goat.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: Ate Up With Envy mmm, mmmm, mmmmm!
November 3rd, 2009
5:26 pm
Amazing the ways we find out about Christians praying for people to get well right after we heard how they want to kill everybody.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:27 pm
@@–
I coughted this up so you can chew on it. It’s huge and it’s in the final House Bill. Hopefully it will survive Conference. It’s a present to you from California’s Henry Waxman, Chairman of House Energy and Commerce and it crushes the egregious deal swung in a secret White House meeting by Rahm Emanuel and the Senate Finance Six who represented 2.2% of the US population.
It’d be interesting to see @@’s analysis of the little cough up I just served up to her where the colossal Medicare Screwup engineered by the GOP and Dr. Bill Frist, thoracic surgeon at Vandy pushed through the Senate signed by Junya which pushed Medicare to the brink of bankruptsy in about 7 years and causes a phenomenal percentage of seniors not to afford their medicine for significant illnesses and undergo considerable morbidity or mortality. It happens every day.
As I said, this provision pushed by Waxman promininetly in the House final bill crushes the pharmaceutical Hooker’s in @@’s party and the Blue Dog hookers by closing the egregious Medicare Part D Gap which forces low income seniors to pay out of pocket costs of all drugs in Medicare Part D between $2700 and $6100 resulting in their going without medications or having to shoose between a roof over their heads, food, or medication.
Further, in the biggest blow to the pharmaceutical johns who own a lot of GOPsters and Blue Dogs it would allow Medicare to bid for all their meds, just like Piedmont, Emory Healthcare, St. Joe’s, Northside, CHOA Pill Hill, CHOA Eggleston, and every other private hospital in the country by using leveraged bidding of powerful coops. This is what caused Medicare to be headed for the Red in 7 years, and I see it brought up here all the time but what I never see is a Republican who admits that they own all the responsibility for passing that legislation that First pushed in 2003 for his pharmaceutical masters.
Paul
November 3rd, 2009
5:28 pm
Report/Whine 5:26
Zing! And he scores!
getalife
November 3rd, 2009
5:28 pm
Wingnut pork.
Geez.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:30 pm
It seems to me that witholding medicine including diagnosis as well as treatment, and substituting only prayer is a great way to get people killed.
Shananeeeeee Fananeeeeeee
November 3rd, 2009
5:30 pm
FRAUD-BAMA. Change in 2010 and 2012, Change we are looking forward to.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:31 pm
“Amazing the ways we find out about Christians praying for people to get well right after we heard how they want to kill everybody.”
Substituting prayer alone for cutting edge clinical medicine is an excellent way to kill people.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:33 pm
ChattyWick:
I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Gettin’ it in is only half the battle. Gettin’ it right? That’s what matters.
It’d be great if you conveyed an understanding of the health care bills above and beyond the kids you teach. I don’t see it here.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
5:34 pm
ChattyWick:
You talk a lot about hookers and johns. Have a lot of experience in that area, do you?
Is your last name Smith?
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:34 pm
@@–
How ’bout that Medicare Part D Donut and Competitive bidding in the House bill? Of course you knew about it–you just didn’t get around to mentioning it obviously. And how about those six case studies I posted. You have suggestions for those patients?
I Report (-: You Whine )-: Ate Up With Envy mmm, mmmm, mmmmm!
November 3rd, 2009
5:37 pm
In fact, up to 15,000 elderly people with cancer in the UK are dying prematurely every year when compared to the rest of Europe and the U.S., according to a report published by the North West Cancer Intelligence Service (NWCIS) which compiles cancer statistics. . . .
A major concern is that the NHS Cancer Plan, introduced in 2000 to improve cancer survival in the UK, has a cut-off point at 70. This results in hospitals having less interest in the elderly. “Yet half of all those diagnosed with cancer are over 70,” says Dr Tony Moran, NWCIS research director. “It’s an area that has been grossly neglected. . . .
Just think, all these people have is a prayer.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
5:37 pm
ChattyWick:
You appear to be a very angry individual. Always angry.
Always.
Can’t conceive of how anyone could get to where you are, emotionally speaking.
That’s ^^^ not me asking you to share. I don’t wanna know.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:38 pm
I know your party has more hookers and johns than any escort service not to mention Vitter, Larry Craig, the congressman in federal prison, Randy Duke Cunningham, and GOP CIA stalwart headed for prison Dusty Foggo.
Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, and Ralph Reed helped run a teen age hooker john operation in the Marianna Islands.
Seems that hooker-john is a staple of the GOP or as I fondly call them Repuboputzokins who are in an increasingly shrinking tent led by Palin, Faux, and Beck where you get 90% of the crap you paste like the 111 “new bureaucracy” delusion.
AmVet
November 3rd, 2009
5:39 pm
Sad.
Even obvious nutjobs from the Middle Ages are afforded the same standing as 21st century science.
I just pity the children with the enormous misfortune to be born to such religious fruitcakes.
Perhaps they’ll be spared the leeches…
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:40 pm
There’s a big difference between anger and presenting striaght facts and more in a nanosecond that gives insight into healthcare or bills and being a ditzy teacher who pastes from Faux. I do the former, and you @@ the latter.
Anytime you want to pull 111 new bureaucracies that you ditzily claimed from a Faux website that is in the House Bill (that doesn’t exist) you go for it girl.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: Ate Up With Envy mmm, mmmm, mmmmm!
November 3rd, 2009
5:41 pm
@@- Mad Harris is a democrat, you were expecting him to be jovial?
All of them are angry and full of hate, what do you think the basis for this blog is?
Someone saw a chance to sneer from his cubicle in the windowless Politburo building.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:42 pm
60% of the country is so dumb they aren’t vaccinating their kids, and should there be mutation, it will be murder. A high percentage of them are GOPsters and wingnut extremists.
@@
November 3rd, 2009
5:43 pm
…and Chad?
I didn’t read your six case studies.
In all honesty, when I see your posts, I give ‘em a quick look to see if you’re angry. If you are (always) I move past.
If one encircles themselves with angry people, they become angry.
If one encircles themselves with negative people, they become negative.
If one encircles themselves with depressed people, they become depressed.
Occasionally, everyone encounters one of the above….but EVERYDAY?
No thanks.
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:44 pm
It seems that the whackjob crackpots here who thought Palin should lead the country conflate being factual and educated with anger.
You can always tell them because they paste from Faux and trash sites; none of what they paste has any basis in reality, and they make broad brush stroke claims that don’t exist like the “111 bureaucracies” because it was all the buzz of Faux and wingnut whackjob websites. “If ah read it on Faux it must be true” says @@.
“Donuts are what cops eat” says @@.
Paul
November 3rd, 2009
5:44 pm
Back to Jay’s question….
Is a treatment methodology that seeks to improve a medical condition eligible for taxpayer support, even though its primary (not sole) advocates are members of a religious organization?
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:45 pm
@@–
I learned years ago when people bring the stupid chronically for years, you aren’t going to educate them, and they stay stupid and die stupid.
Paul
November 3rd, 2009
5:46 pm
Gov’t Option
[[60% of the country is so dumb they aren’t vaccinating their kids, and should there be mutation, it will be murder. A high percentage of them are GOPsters and wingnut extremists.]]
So many assertions. Sources for them?
Gov Option Done Deal!
November 3rd, 2009
5:46 pm
There’s a helluva difference between a quack modality that seeks to improve a condition and a clinical medical modality that has been tested by double blind studies in tertiary medical centers that actually does improve a medical condition. Seems like a lot of the wingnuts here like Orin Hatch can’t tell the difference.