A recent Los Angeles Times article by Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger detailed a provision to the healthcare band-aid, one introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch and supported by other congressional luminaries like Sen. John Kerry, which “requires insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.”
After reading this, I immediately began to excavate for information about the Church of Christ, Scientist, whose name seems more than a little oxymoronic. According to the site, beliefnet.com, “suffering is a false belief” that originates in the mind. “Physicians are not viewed antagonistically; but their methods are seen as ineffective because they treat disease as originating in the body rather than mind.”
Hamburger and Geiger quoted Christian Science Church official Phil Davis who said that ‘prayer treatment was an effective alternative to conventional healthcare.’
Remember, now, that both Kerry and Hatch—in fact, all members of Congress—benefit from socialized medicine, the very best our tax dollars can purchase. Those we elect to represent our interests pay a very small amount for our largesse, a pittance compared to what we ordinaries are forced to spend on outrageous premiums and high co-pays. Family members of the power wielders are covered, too, and pre-existing conditions are not denied.
So, all of this leads to some conclusions/suggestions: if suffering is head-case stuff and can be prayed away, we don’t need medical therapies and, therefore, Big Insurance and Big Pharma are obsolete. Therefore, we citizens should demand the termination of this obsolescence—health coverage for Congress. Let them eat prayers.
And we’ll tell Sen. Hatch that if he’s short of breath, feels a crushing pain in his chest, breaks out in a cold sweat, is nauseas, and has arm discomfort, he shouldn’t allow anyone to call 911. Instead, he must request a good Christian Scientist Dial-A-Prayer to drive the evil and massive coronary from his noggin. If he thinks for one second that he requires a pacemaker, he can pace the prayers. Because it’s his head. Nothing more.
And for Sen. Kerry, we’ll advise if his prostrate cancer recurs or metastasizes, he should hire the prayer providers to exorcise from his mind whatever’s the matter—those figments of “false belief.” After all, who needs medical therapy when prayer therapy is so very state of the art?
Now, for the last: Congressmen and women who don’t run swiftly from a provision put forth by vomitous panderers, pouring church and state into a blender, should receive no access to physicians and medical procedures. Pray-away-the-demons will be their robust plan to wellness, without any other option.
Deliver us from quackery. Deliver us from hypocrisy.
MISSY BEATTIE lives in New York City. She’s written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she’s a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,’05, she has been writing political articles. She can be reached at: Missybeat@aol.com
