Spiritual Health Care

This is the letter I am sending to my Representative and Senators. I hope enough people take the time to speak out on this. The only part I wrote is the last paragraph.

January 17, 2010

Dear Representative Schiff,

Dear Senator Boxer,

Dear Senator Feinstein,

Tucked into the health care reform bill passed by Sen. Harkin’s Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee is a mandate that insurers reimburse for “religious or spiritual health care” that is classified as a deductible medical care expense by the Internal Revenue Service. See S.1679, Section 3103(a)(1)(D).

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on which Congressman Bruce Braley sits has added a similar measure to the House health care reform bill. See Section 125 of HR3200.

If the federal government forces the insurance industry to pay for prayer, the Christian Science church and other faith healing practitioners will use the federal law as another argument that Christian Science “treatment” or prayer should be a legal substitute for medical care of sick children.

Between 1 and 5 children currently die in the United States, per month, from religiously-motivated medical neglect. If the Congress passes into law these provisions equating prayer with medical care, this number will surely increase.

There will be more laws like West Virginia’s religious defense to fatal neglect of a child when parents withhold medical care and instead rely on prayer-treatment “if fees and expenses incurred in connection with such treatment are permitted to be deducted from taxable income as ‘medical expenses’ pursuant to regulations or rules promulgated by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. (West Virginia Code 61-8D-4a(b)).

Iowa’s religious defense to felony child endangerment and manslaughter at Iowa Code 726.6(d) has been justified on similar grounds.

The government should not be forcing anyone to pay for prayer. We urge Congress to remove all provisions in the health care reform bills that require insurers to reimburse for prayer or any other “health care” that is not evidence-based.

The irony here is that it is typically people of faith who pull the "but it's to protect the children" card to evoke the emotional reaction they need to sway people to an irrational stance that supports their side of many arguments. Now here we are, many of the non-believers of the world, having to pull that exact same card. Yet, we are having to pull it for the REAL and PROVABLE abuses that WILL occur under the kind of measures such as the one in question. They would be abuses perpetrated by people of faith no less. What is happening to our country!? It floors me that this and many other kinds of atrocities perpetrated in our world, of which are fueled by ridiculous ideas stemming from the Abrahamic faiths, are not enough to convince more of the world how dangerous religion and belief in god is. This kind of lunacy needs to be stamped out of our country not turned into law. Contrary to popular belief this country was founded on secular principles and it survives as well as it does because of those secular principles. Keep faith in churches and especially out of our government. I will not be forced to pay my tax dollars to people who will get paid for abusing and killing children!

Sincerely,

Mr. Noah Wiles
5019 Santa Anita Ave
Temple City, CA 91780-3618