A healthy morality

Editor's note: Ian Hodge is a regular columnist for Business Reform Magazine, the leading Christian business magazine with over 100,000 readers. Each issue of Business Reform features practical advice on operating successfully in business while glorifying God.

It is easy to tell when voting season is approaching. The politicians appear with preposterous ideas about all sorts of things that have one goal in view: to get them elected. While we understand the process, we do not accept that some of the ideas offered are at all reasonable.

Consider Democrat Dick Gephardt, for example. He’s on the hustings as a Democractic Presidential hopeful and nothing short of a self-proclaimed divinity is his plan for success.

At one time it was thought ? and believed ? that God was the one who determined morality. The Ten Commandments were a simple but comprehensive list of “thou shalt nots” which gave society a moral framework in which to operate.

Mr. Gephardt, however, is not satisfied with God’s Ten Commandments. (Politicians never are, because these actually operate as a brake upon civil government). For this Democratic hopeful, there is a new commandment to be added to the list: “Thou shalt be entitled to health care at thy neighbor's expense.”

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Now this phrase will catch the attention of many. Not satisfied with they way they have managed their own lives, there are some in the community who would just love to get their hands on their neighbor’s wealth and use it for health care. Taking the money themselves leaves them open to prosecution as petty thieves. But if they could get the politicians to pass a law that forces their neighbor to hand over the money via the tax collectors, then this is somehow no longer thieving. Covetousness was a prohibition under God’s Ten Commandments, but some would make it a requirement, since this becomes the motivation for taking some people’s money in any method. We cannot afford health care ourselves, we covet the wealth that others have who can afford it, so we ask the politicians to confiscate that wealth and give it to us. And we fool ourselves that this is the “moral” way to treat our neighbors.

At one time most people were aware that the command “Thou shalt not steal” established property rights, not only in tangible goods but also in money. Today, governments may not take a person’s car or land without due compensation, but they can sure take as much of their money as they can without having to compensate those who have had their money confiscated (euphemistically called “taxation”).

Now I happen to agree with Mr. Gephardt that all people ought to be entitled to health care ? but not at their neighbor’s involuntary expense. Why don’t people pay for their own health care? Is it too expensive? Then what is it that allows medical providers to charge prices higher than the market will bear?

It would be much better if our presidential hopefuls would address the real issues rather than offer half-baked, ill-conceived ideas for a new morality that somehow is supposed to go one better than the Almighty’s list of what is right and wrong.

Health care reform is needed, and it should start by getting government out of the money confiscation racket and also out of the control of medicine scam. But this is unlikely to happen when our politicians and bureaucrats are imbued with a wrong sense of their own divinity, believing as they do, that their laws somehow make up for God’s neglect in providing health care for all.

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