Yeah, I have opinions. I usually do. Personally, I have a BIG problem with our legislature deciding to use even one of my tax dollars to pay for abortions. I also have a problem with ILLEGAL immigrants draining our country dry of resources. Having aired some of my moral concerns, I do believe that a group of intelligent people ought to be able to come up with a workable solution to make improvements. I did process improvement for management systems and processes for years. I have seen so much waste in the last ten years working with state and federal systems that it makes me feel ill as a taxpayer. We can do better. I pray for our country and our leaders daily and make suggestions anywhere I can. I do write to my representatives on a regular basis. God help us.

Sharon, I couldn’t help but smile at the first few words of your post….I, too, usually have opinions-and they are usually pretty staunch!
Anyway, here’s a post from a different point of view.
When my son was born with what will eventually be a life-ending heart defect, my then-husband and I were both working, making a modest $100,000 a year between us. Because of our income, we qualified for absolutely NO help whatsoever. We had insurance, but within less than a year, our son had reached the lifetime cap of a million dollars imposed by our plan. In the meantime, I couldn’t work and had to rent an apartment 3 hours from home, pay for gas, etc, etc. What little money we saved was gone, and credit cards were maxed out. Had it not been for ONE woman in the system that believed that we should be able to get some help, we would have lost everything within that first year. That one woman was able to get Jacob on a medical waiver that included Medicaid. I have always been brought up to do for yourself, but THANK GOD that this option was there. The cost of medicine and procedures is ridiculously out of reach for the normal person. Even now, my husband and I go without medical care to free up money for the things that our children HAVE to have done. It’s very scary for me that the rug may get pulled out from under my sick son’s care regimen. What if when he’s 16, they decide there is no money left in Medicaid, and he’s just out of luck?? How do I tell him that we can’t buy life-sustaining medicine for him anymore or tell him that he can’t have any more surgeries?
Yet-on the side of the government-with millions and millions of people, how do you reasonably determine the legitimate ‘coverage-worthy’ people from those that are scamming the system and freeloading?
You have to wonder if the system in Canada would work here. Health care is covered for EVERYONE. Jacob would never see a bill for what he needs done.

I want to address the question from the standpoint of the proper Christian response, and the systemic problem from a spiritual angle. Again, I find myself philosophically opposed to the status quo. What did Jesus really say about this? Did he ask us to give our money to the government in taxes, and just have them take care of those in need? No, he told us to do it ourselves, go about finding needs and meeting them. I suggest that the Body has allowed the government to become our “proxy”, if you will. A proxy is basically someone standing in for someone else in a duty or responsibility. It happened over time, with hundreds of programs over several years, but it is not the Biblical model. It has been this way for so long that most everyone accepts it. The Church is lazy now and Christians are more and more willing to just pay more in taxes so that the government can provide cradle to grave assistance to whomever needs it, but when a hand is extended in help, it should be connected to the face of Jesus, not a government bureaucrat collecting a paycheck. As it is, we can sit at home and say, why should I worry about the poor, they can collect free health care, welfare, food stamps, etc. from the government, that’s what I pay my taxes for! So the cycle of poverty continues (even though the government began a War on Poverty decades ago, it contines to rise despite hundreds of state and federal programs designed to fight it) because it is missing key elements; it must be delivered with grace and compassion, as done by the hands and feet of Jesus. If any of these problems are to be solved it will be through Revival and Revolution in the Body of Christ! There are many faith-based organizations that offer solutions to healthcare reform that are free-market based and more Biblically-modeled, but in the “government has to fix everything” climate we are currently in, they are being ignored.