Tuesday, March 16, 2010

What They Really Think...

I'm not entirely sure what the problems are with the abortion language in the Senate version of the health-care bill. From what I've heard, both the House and Senate bills require people to pay for any abortion coverage separately with their own private money, just in the House it isn't on the policy and you have to buy a separate "rider," while in the Senate it is on the policy, but you have to contribute your own check each month for the abortion portion of it.

However, the USCCB does see a problem with it for some reason, and they've done more research than I, so I'll take their word for it and won't support it until the language changes (but, at the same time, I'm not going to lose too much sleep over the accusation that this is the start of massive federal funding for abortion even if it does pass with the current language). If someone could explain the problem better, I'd be very interested to hear, because the media from both sides hasn't done a very good job of it.

However, whatever your thoughts on the abortion issue or on whether the plan is going to be effective (and my Social Credit instincts tell me it could work, as I do not believe there is an absolute shortage of health-care in the US), I'd hope any objections people have are substantive. However, the chatter you hear from "conservatives" on the internet seems to reveal their real motives for objecting. For example, the comments on this Fr Z post:

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/03/archbp-chaput-on-the-healthcare-bill/#comments

The whole thing quickly devolved away from any question of abortion and into a tirade against "illegal" immigrants and "Socialism," to the point of accusing Archbishop Chaput of being a Liberal or Left-Winger for supporting health-care coverage for the immigrants (that sort of anti-"illegal"-immigrant sentiment is
a clear example of the flaw in the current international order of domestic democracies that I pointed out earlier, about governments only answering to their own citizens).

It is an embarrassing display, and an example of everything that is wrong with the Right today.

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