Tag Archives: Hospital

News

Should Christians who vote for socialism expect to keep their religious liberty?

8 Comments
Four white Canadian police officers arrest black pastor
Four white Canadian police officers arrest black pastor

I saw two interesting news stories about how Catholic hospitals were targeted by the secular left government and courts. The first story comes from progressive state of California, where the courts wanted to force the Catholics to perform sex-reassignment surgeries on transgender people. The second story comes from Canada, where the state wanted the hospital to perform euthanasia.

Here’s Evolution News reporting on the first story:

A Catholic hospital chain known as Dignity Health refused to perform a hysterectomy on a transgendered male, as against Catholic moral teaching. The patient sued for discrimination, but the case was dismissed on the basis that the hospital was legally following its faith principles. Alas, a Court of Appeals reversed the decision, reinstating the case to the active docket.

Here’s the court’s decision – they said it was illegal discrimination on the basis of “gender identity”:

The pleading alleges that Mercy allows doctors to perform hysterectomies as treatment for other conditions but refused to allow Dr. Dawson to perform the same procedure as treatment for Minton’s gender dysphoria, a condition that is unique to transgender individuals. Denying a procedure as treatment for a condition that affects only transgender persons supports an inference that Dignity Health discriminated against Minton based on his gender identity.

So, the secular courts, which are filled with government employees whose salaries are paid by Catholic taxpayers, decided that Catholics don’t have a right to act like Catholics. In California, Christians must be forced to act like atheists.  Or else be punished by the legal system.

Here’s the second story out of Canada, from Global News:

Under the threat of a possible court challenge, Nova Scotia has quietly changed its policy on medically assisted dying at a Catholic hospital in the province.

In a statement to Global News, the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA) says: “Assessments and provision of MAiD [medical assistance in dying] will be available in a section of St. Martha’s Regional Hospital complex at the Antigonish Health and Wellness Centre.”

St. Martha’s Regional Hospital was exempt from assisted dying services as the result of a 1996 agreement between the Nova Scotia government and the Sisters of St. Martha that gave control of the hospital to the Nova Scotia government.

The agreement made medical assistance in dying forbidden at the hospital in Antigonish, N.S. The Sisters of St. Martha say they believe in protecting life until the end.

Because Canada has a “Medicare for All”, single-payer health care system, all payment for medical services is performed by the secular left government. Christian nurses, doctors, hospitals, etc. thought that it was “compassionate” for government to take over the provision of health care, so they allowed the government to come in and take control of their hospitals. Today, Christians have a choice. They can either perform abortions, sex-changes, IVF (which usually involves discarding embryos), breast enlargements, etc. OR they can stop practicing medicine.

American Christians in non-SOGI-states should take note of how the secular left treats Christians in health care. This is how they want to treat Christians in every area – public, and private. It’s already happening in Canada. Teachers, police, lawyers, judges can come into your home, and tell you how to live, and how to raise your children according to secular leftist values. And Christians in Canada are paying the atheist progressives to rule.

Remember: the government that is big enough to give you everything you want – free schools, free health care, free education, etc. – is big enough to take everything you have.

It would be nice if Christian parents and Christian churches had taught young people about the critical importance for smaller government as a requirement for a society that allows religious liberty. I see a lot of concern from Christians about global warming, illegal immigrants, refugees, etc. But not much about which policies allow Christians act like Christians in public.

I know that Christian parents are so busy, and Christian churches are not really places where young people can develop a Christian worldview. If you learn anything from a Christian upbringing, you learn how to color pictures, memorize Bible verses, say “the Bible says so”, and sing praise hymns. Is all that good protection against the policies of the secular left? How many young people today who were raised in the church think that “medicare for all”, “green new deal”, etc. won’t affect their religious liberty? How many of them know what it’s like to be a Christian in atheist socialist states like North Korea – or even in less communist countries like Canada?

News

Donald Trump would expand Obamacare into single-payer health care system

12 Comments

Let’s take a look at how well a policy he supports – single payer health care – is working in Canada, where it’s been the law of the land for decades.

First, let’s see Trump explain his view on single payer health care in his own words:

When government pays for all the health care provisioning, we call that a single-payer system. And Trump is for it – that clip is from September 27, 2015. In the Fox News debate in August, he said that single payer health care “works in Canada“.

So, let’s go and see what the Canadians are saying about their single payer system, by looking a wide variety of stories from last month from a wide variety of Canadian news sources, covering a wide variety of Canadian provinces.

First, let’s start on the west coast, and then work our way east.

The Vancouver Sun reports on British Columbia wait times:

Median waiting times from referral by family doctor to treatment are 22.4 weeks, or almost six months in B.C., longer than all provinces except those in Atlantic Canada, according to the 25th annual survey of 2,382 medical specialists.

And waits between the first appointment with a specialist and getting treatment are 14 weeks in B.C., the highest since the survey began. The doctors who take the survey are asked to give their best estimates of waits for care.

The government-run CBC, reporting on Manitoba health care:

Manitoba has been given a failing and a near-failing grade for prostate and breast cancer treatment wait times by Canada’s Wait Times Alliance.

The group released their annual wait time report card on Tuesday, giving Manitoba an F for wait times for radiation and curative care treatment for prostate cancer and a D for the same treatments for breast cancer.

Manitoba has received an F for prostate cancer treatment wait times for more than five years, and a D in breast cancer treatment wait times for the past four years.

The Globe and Mail reports on the city of Winnipeg:

New data shows Winnipeg hospitals still have the longest emergency room wait times in Canada.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information says Winnipeg’s six emergency rooms all came in below average on the time it takes 90 per cent of patients to see a doctor after they check into an emergency room.

The average for the Winnipeg Health Region as a whole is 5.7 hours compared to the Canadian average of 3.1 hours.

And the Montreal Gazette reports on the province of Quebec:

Quebec reported the steepest increase this year of any province in wait times for medical imaging scans in Canada — a finding that suggests the public system is being stretched to the limit, a national survey reveals.

The 25th annual survey by the Fraser Institute found that the median wait time in hospital for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan in Quebec jumped to 12 weeks this year from eight in 2014. By comparison, the median wait time for an MRI is five weeks in Ontario, unchanged from last year.

Wait times increased slightly for other medical imaging in Quebec, going up from four to five weeks for both ultrasounds and CT (computerized tomography) scans.

Investors Business Daily also wrote about this and had a helpful chart breaking down how long people are waiting for treatment:

Single-payer health care wait times in Canada
Single-payer health care wait times in Canada

Canada also has a well-known doctor shortage. Their way of controlling costs is to limit the number of people who can practice medicine, so less care can be billed to the government. Get in line, and if you die waiting for treatment, that’s great for them – less money to pay. After all, they get to keep all the taxes they took from you during your life, and now they don’t have to give you anything back since YOU’RE DEAD.

Trump says that single-payer “works in Canada”. Does this look like it is working to you? Would you be willing to have 45% of your income go to federal, provincial, municipal income and sales taxes so that you could get in line in a system like this? This is Trump’s ideal, is it your ideal?

If you want to see what Canadian health care is really like on the ground, check out this video of Steven Crowder trying to get health care in the province of Quebec:

That’s what Donald Trump thinks is working. His past statements about being “very pro-choice”, and about same-sex marriage being “the law of the land” and about single payer and amnesty make him out to be a Democrat. He has never put effort into any conservative initiative on any conservative issue since the day he was born. He has been a Democrat, has donated to Democrats, including many, many donations to the Clintons. Only a complete idiot could support a Democrat in the Republican primary, especially when there were so many conservatives who fought and suffered for conservative issues in the past, e.g. – Perry, Jindal, Walker and Cruz.

As for his experience with making money, he inherited all his money, and he is worth $10 billion less today than he would have been if he had just invested his silver spoon inheritance in index funds. He knows less about politics than you do. He has gone bankrupt more times than you have. He is less good at making money than you are. He was born wealthy. He has no idea what conservatives believe. He is not conservative now, never has been conservative, and never will be conservative. You cannot choose a candidate by listening to mere words, you have to look at evidence, you have to look at accomplishments.

News

NHS appeals decision allowing midwives to conscientiously object to performing abortions

5 Comments

What happens when you let a secular government take over health care provisioning?

Here is a story from the BBC about the state-run health care system in the UK.

Excerpt:

The UK’s highest court will hear legal arguments on whether midwives have a right to refuse to take any part in abortion procedures on moral grounds.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde appealed to the Supreme Court after judges in Scotland said Roman Catholic midwives had a right to conscientious objection.

[…]Five judges in London will hear the case. A ruling is expected next year.

Ms Doogan, from Garrowhill in Glasgow, and Mrs Wood, from Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, were employed as labour ward co-ordinators at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow.

[…]This landmark case tests the balance between those whose religious beliefs do not allow them to play any part whatsoever in abortion, and the health authorities’ duty under the law to enable women to have an abortion. Many Christian groups back the midwives’ position.

The midwives’ counsel, Gerry Moynihan QC, told the court in the women’s earlier successful appeal that the law was clear that the right to conscientious objection contained in the Abortion Act was intended to apply to the whole team whose involvement was necessary to achieve the procedure.

If the Supreme Court upholds the midwives’ earlier successful appeal, it could set a legal precedent, allowing other midwives who object to abortion to take the same stance.

The Royal College of Midwives and the women’s charity British Pregnancy Advisory Service have both warned that any such ruling could have severe implications for the care of women choosing to terminate their pregnancy.

The BPAS is the largest abortion provider in the UK. I blogged before about their leader, Ann Furedi, who supports sex-selection abortions. I thought then that sex-selection abortions was the worst thing about abortion, but now I see that she would actually force her moral views on other people, compelling them by the power of government to act against their beliefs. There is something deep inside me that just recoils from making a person do something that they think is morally wrong. But I guess pro-abortion people don’t share my concern.

When I blogged before about these two midwives when they won their appeal case, I wrote this:

If the health care system were private, then it would be easy for midwives to find another company to work for that did not violate their consciences. But when the government runs the whole health care system, where are you supposed to go? They are a monopoly and they make the rules. Yet another reasons for Christians to vote for smaller government. In a free market, if you don’t want to buy something from one store, you can go to another store. There is competition. But where are these nurses supposed to go? They are midwives, and the government and the courts make the rules in a government-run health care system.

This is why we need to keep the government OUT of health care. When you work for a government monopoly, and they want you to do something that you don’t want to do, you have two choices – do what they want or leave the country. If the only health care system is government-run, then if you want to practice health care, you have to leave. That seems unfair to me.