by VorJack
The LA Times recently had an article about a small provision in the Senate version of the Heath Care bill:
Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments
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, which was added by Sen. Orrin Hatch and backed by John Kerry and the late Ted Kennedy, prevents discrimination against “religious and spiritual health care” by health insurers providing care through the proposed Gateway system. There was a similar provision in the House version of the bill, but that has since been removed in the newest version, HR3962. This Senate version still remains.
Health Care Deform
Pullquote: This would be an absolute invitation to organize
The bill in question is S.1679, the “Affordable Health Choices Act.” The provision in question reads as follows:
‘‘The essential benefits provided for in subparagraph (A) shall include a requirement that there be non-discrimination in health care in a manner that, with respect to an individual who is eligible for medical or surgical care under a qualified health plan offered through a Gateway, prohibits the Administrator of the Gateway, or a qualified health plan offered through the Gateway, from denying such individual benefits for religious or spiritual health care, except that such religious or spiritual health care shall be an expense eligible for deduction as a medical care expense as determined by Internal Revenue Service Rulings interpreting section 213(d) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 as of January 1, 2009.” (Sec 3103(d))
If I’m reading this right (and there’s no guarantee that I am), this would affect all insurers who take part in the Affordable Health Benefit Gateway programs that the bill seeks to create in the individual states. These programs would be administered by the states and paid for by federal grants, and would assist those people without health care, either by steering them to programs they can afford or by providing subsidized health insurance. This particular provision would prevent any of those insurers from discriminating against “spiritual health care” provided that it fit the definition of deductible medical care.
As the bill says, the IRS tax code provides a definition of medical care in Title 26, Section 213(d). The tax code itself doesn’t specifically mention anything about prayer cures, but according to IRS Publication 502 (PDF), “You can include in medical expenses fees you pay to Christian Science practitioners for medical care.” (p. 7) Also chiropractors, but that’s another argument.
So that explains the emphasis in the LA Times article about Christian Science. The IRS already considered their services as medical expense for the purposes of tax deduction, so this provision would require certain health insurers to pay for it.
Critical Condition, or only Serious?
Pullquote: I offered this amendment because I believe that everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, should have access to healthcare.
Naturally, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is all over this. Again from the LA Times article:
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group of atheists and agnostics that promotes separation of church and state, said the opportunity to receive payment for spiritual care could encourage other groups to seek similar status.
Gaylor’s point there is questionable. Certainly, many religious groups might try to get themselves injected into the tax code as providers of spiritual medical care, but there’s no reason to think that any will succeed. Further, as a spokeswoman for John Kerry pointed out, companies are prevented from discriminating, but that just means they are required to apply the same standards across the board. The insurers may declare that they will only provide reimbursement for procedures that meet their standards for efficacy. And that would leave the Christian Scientists out in the cold.
Still, it seems obvious that this provision will lead to many lawsuits and heated arguments, and add to the risk that the Government will be entangled with religion. So what’s the point? According to Orrin Hatch, “I offered this amendment because I believe that everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, should have access to health care.” But I don’t see how the provision as currently worded does that. One could easily add a provision that wouldn’t fund an insurer that discriminated on the basis of religion, so why the language of “religious and spiritual health care”?
Right now there are still more questions than answers, and more heat than light. While I think that the FFRF is banging the drum a bit too hard, I basically agree that the bill would be better off without the complications that this provision brings.
I suggest calling or e-mailing your Senators and requesting that this provision be struck from the bill. Tell them that if the provision remains, then during the next election you and all your friends will pray for their reelection — rather than donating, assisting their campaign or, you know, voting.
I think that it’s an odd provision to write into the law, but it shouldn’t cause major problems. No doctor with a brain will refer people for shiatsu massage when they need a hip-replacement. There are people stupid enough that they don’t realise the old Tim Minchin lyric: “Do you know what they call alternative medicine that has been tested, studied and proven to work? MEDICINE”, but I sincerely doubt that enough people will elect for alternative medicine for it to be more than a minor issue.
I just want to know how this amendment can be reconciled with the one that prevents any private insurers that participate in the exchange(yes there are other names for it and other ‘options’ in the various plans) to fund abortions in any way except in cases of rape,incest,and death of the mother. Considering as stated above the amendment that allows for prayer is to prevent discrimination or at least that’s what the liberals signing off on it are clinging too,does not this other amendment foster it and generally for religious reasons? Hey, I don’t like abortions much,but in most cases I’d rather they happen,are legal, and protected, if just because the planet is already overpopulated and unwanted children will generally become abused children(yes people could carry to term and put the children up for adoption,but that ignores the fact that there are already tens of millions of unadopted children out there that no one is adopting, and the cost of actually bringing a child to term and having it. No matter the individual cases of some opponents of abortion taking in/adopting multiple children,by and large the same folks that oppose abortion,would never adopt or fund health care for the mothers or children. let’s not also speak of how most jobs on the low end of the economic spectrum treat those whom are pregnant,or how hard it is if say those mothers are still in high school or younger and how they get treated there) and if the moms can’t get proper abortions they tend to die in back alleys via illegal ones.
Custador..I think via the amendment it is what someone wants rather than what a doctor refers or decides would be best, in a way I think as much as it is a way to allow a backdoor into the seperation of church and state,it’s also likely to be used against the health bill later when someone gets coverage for acupuncture or shiatsu etc., in other words I suspect it’s being inserted as a poison pill to allow the dismantling of any program that gets set up…as it will be used as an obvious example of waste and or misuse of monies(as long as it’s not based on christian faiths anyway).
I didn’t consider that angle… You have a good point, but that said why would Ted Kennedy have supported it if that was so? He was a pretty seasoned statesman.
well he was dying from brain cancer,and probably hoped/thought he would live long enough to add to the amendment…..also to tell the truth he was a weak liberal for a long time(say since chappaquidick) and any change he could get he probably thought was better than none he often sacrificed for incremental gains rather than fighting to the bitter end instead of ending up with nothing at all. Unfourtunately more often than not his bills became so gutted to get votes that by the time they passed they were generally worthless or added to the problems he wanted to fix,it sometimes was so bad the bills protected what he fought against.
Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer
http://www.ahjonline.com/article/PIIS0002870305006496/abstract
Shows that prayer actually caused patients to do worse not better. Are we going back to death panels?
Have a search for the results of attending Lourdes if you like that one – you’re actually more likely to make a “miraculous” recovery if you DON’T go there!
“According to Orrin Hatch, ‘I offered this amendment because I believe that everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, should have access to health care.’”
THE Orrin Hatch, or just some other Orrin Hatch? This seems suspiciously pod-personlike.
If God wanted you to be sick, though, would he have given you the disease in the first place? Seems odd to ask him to heal you, when he’s the one responsible for your sickness in the first place. Arrogant even, like you’re stepping all over his plan.
Ah, but the plan is (and if this makes no sense, just take a step back and call it mysterious) that with our own free will, we need to realize in the face of disease how much we not only need but truly desire God’s love for us. Sure, here and there people die instead of getting pray-healed, and sometimes God decides he wants a few million to bask in his love at once. But they go to God’s everlasting feast (no wait that was the other guy) blissful stupor immediately.
So basically it’s ok to go get treatment, as long as there’s sufficient suffering involved. Mother Teresa knew her Christianity, even if she couldn’t really believe it. Well, apparently most Christians don’t have enough faith to really extend the suffering to her standard (which she realized upon others not her own order of course). After all, how could she have properly observed all the beautiful Misery for JesusTM being sick and poor herself?
I believe that is part of why Lying for JesusTM is also ok – as lying often creates some degree of suffering for someone, especially when done systematically and to masses of people, it’s also a necessary part of the Loving PlanTM.
Certainly, many religious groups might try to get themselves injected into the tax code as providers of spiritual medical care, but there’s no reason to think that any will succeed.
I’m not sure that will be the case. I realize that VorJack’s comments are tentative, not certain. That said, as someone who’s spent my entire life and now my young career working in churches and with faith-based nonprofits, I can (albeit as an anecdote) say that plenty of these types of organizations intentionally reject federal funding, rather than pursue it, because of the restrictions on how federal dollars can be spent.
Still, it seems like a needless amendment that’s bound to increase the volume of the shouting match rather than actually accomplish anything positive.
I would think that people might turn to those types of “treatments” as they got more desperate with their condition and if actual medical care wasn’t working. However, I thought a big point of this whole healthcare thing was to avoid many of the unnecessary and ineffective treatments currently prescribed by doctors to acquiesce their patients mental needs rather than their medical needs (or just to make a dime). In that case, something like spiritual healthcare would have to be proved effective and then prescribed in order to be covered. If that is the case, taxpayers will definitely not be paying for this BS, but if that part was omitted, we’re going to be paying for someone’s higher levels or whatever they are called in scientology.
I respectfully disagree that — if this provision should pass — there will not be groups angling to set themselves up as “religions” so they can provide “spiritual care” and get insurance/government reimbursement for doing so. It’s not as though no one has ever “created” a religion so as to make a profit and avoid taxes (I only need name Lafayette R. Hubbard to provide one example of this phenomenon). I suppose the example of Scientology has put regulators such as the IRS “on notice” about this maneuver, but to assume it cannot ever happen, is just foolish.
For me the problem is not so much government entanglement with religion, though that is a factor here. It’s the potential for abuse, for profiteering, for steering people away from the kinds of care that they ought to get, and for wasting tax/premium dollars on “treatments” that do nothing whatever.
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I’m not even going to worry about this. The point is to create MORE kinds of treatments insurance companies will have to pay for. They fight harder than a menopausal Hetty Green for every penny as it is. They’ll NEVER let this get thru.
I’m not sure about that. For an insurance company it may be cheaper to pay a few thousand bucks for a prayer treatment or someone who “heal” by shooting energy out of their ears and be rid of you in a few months when you drop dead then cover real treatment that in some cases mean you have to take an expensive drug for years.
Just in case this pass I want it to be on the record that my religion say that all my problems will be cured if I’m given $1000000 every week.
Yeah I just joined this religion myself. LOL
This is a good example of why I want line-item voting, not just line-item veto. It’s ridiculous that people have to decide on a simple yes or no to any bill that includes such a wide mix of good ideas and pure bullshit.
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Wouldn’t this discriminate against everyone who isn’t a Christian Scientist? How can that be fair?
This is sick and embarrassing.