Conventional wisdom has it that, given the unbalanced turnout that is expected next Tuesday, the Missouri effort to weaken health care reform, Proposition C, will prevail. A comment on my earlier post about the Missouri Hospital Association’s anti-Proposition C campaign noted that when it passes it “will not be pretty …, especially on Fox and hate radio.” Well, I’m here to tell you that the triumphalism has already gotten bizarre.
The St. Louis Beacon reports that State Senator Jane Cunningham believes that Proposition C is divinely ordained since its assured passage just goes to show that God “interferes in the affairs of men.” According to Cunningham, God doesn’t want all Missourians to have equal access to health care.
What I want Cunningham to ask God next time she and he get together for coffee is why he’s so worried about requiring individuals to take responsibility for their health care? She and the people she represents affirmed, after all, that they want a private rather than a public health care delivery system; did they do so only because they thought that they could push the cost of their emergency room visits onto the rest of us, helping to push health costs ever upward, and sending deficits spiraling?
Cunningham seems to imply that God opposes the individual mandate because it limits “personal freedom,” and requires people to spend money. But God doesn’t seem to be at all worried about mandates for the purchase of auto insurance. Nor does he seem to be worried about requirements for building standards, food safety measures, disabled access and a whole slew of “mandates” that have associated costs, but which make our country a decent place to live.
Cunningham and her pals also seem to think that God is all lathered up about “state’s rights” – which leads me to ask why he didn’t intervene more forcefully when that issue was settled at the conclusion of the American Civil War. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that a supposedly all-powerful God really gets too worked up about weak constitutional arguments.
All this leaves me with just one question. If it isn’t God who’s working to deliver a victory for the Proposition C forces, who could it be? Could it have anything to do with that force darker forces that manifest as apathy, stupidity and cupidity? I don’t know about you, but that’s not exactly what I describe as divine intervention.