Having witnessed the effects of both cigarette addiction and alcohol abuse in close family members I can vouch for the harm caused by them. What’s worse is I’m not the only one. Most of you reading this have probably seen nicotine or alcohol addiction in someone close and you know of the life-threatening health risks caused by heavy, extended usage of either drug.

I’m not demanding a ban on cigarettes or even alcohol, the right to smoke or get blind drunk is everyone’s right so long as their actions harm no others. I just want the government to swallow its pride and acknowledge that marijuana use causes no long-term side effects, does not pose a threat to the life or well-being of anyone when used responsibly and has proven medical potential for the treatment of many illnesses. Not to mention the vast industrial applications of hemp, some of which would create less dependency on foreign sources of imported lumber.

When you criminalize something that isn’t a crime you still create real crime and real criminals.

Being without health insurance myself when I first heard President Obama’s health care proposal I could not understand why some people became so rabid in their objection to it. Obama promised affordable health care and the bill would restrict insurance companies from discriminating against people (be it existing health conditions or whatever) and dropping their coverage with no warning; often leaving the families of the sick and injured to struggle to support rising medical costs. Sorting through thousands of pages of legal jargon I understand that, as is the case with most everything told to us by our elected officials, they’ve been telling us half the story. What we think we’re getting with the bill has had some “minor” additions included with it.

This is an article from the Cedar Rapids Gazette, October 18, 2009:

DOES ONE BIZARRE HEALTH CARE POLICY MERIT ANOTHER?

Rita Swan

Tucked into the health care reform bill passed by Sen. Harkin’s Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee is a mandate that insurers reimburse for “religious or spiritual health care” that is classified as a deductible medical care expense by the Internal Revenue Service. See S.1679, Section 3103(a)(1)(D).

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on which Congressman Bruce Braley sits has added a similar measure to the House health care reform bill. See Section 125 of HR3200.

The Internal Revenue Service allows bills sent by Christian Science practitioners for their prayers to be deducted from income tax as a medical care expense.

The agency has declined requests to provide evidence that Christian Science heals disease.

Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy directed church practitioners to “make their charges for treatment equal to those of reputable physicians in their respective localities.” (First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 237) These treatments consist only of prayer.

These practitioners set their own rates, but sometimes their charges are indeed comparable to medical bills. In 1989, Christian Science healer Mario Tosto charged parents $446 for two days of prayer-treatment for Ian Lundman, an 11-year-old Minnesota boy with diabetes.

The boy died.

In Michigan, an insurance company balked at paying a Christian Science practitioner’s bill of $1,775 for her prayers on top of medical bills for the patient. The couple sued the company, which then settled out of court. Stephenson v. State Farm, 48th District Court, as reported in Michigan Trial Lawyers Association newsletter, October 1986.

The IRS has an extremely broad definition of deductible medical care. Any service primarily intended to affect “some structure or function of the body” is medical care. The “experience, qualification, or title of the person rendering services” is irrelevant.

Whether anyone besides the person paying for the service thinks it is medical is irrelevant.

Bills incurred for anyone’s prayers or healing rituals are deductible medical care. (For verification, see these sources: IR Ruling 55-261, 19551 C.B. 307, IR Ruling 63-91, 1963-1 C.B. 54, and Fischer v. Commissioner, 50 T.C.
164, 194 (1968)).

Fortunately, most religions do not send bills for their prayers. And the IRS’s bizarre, looseygoosey policy may not have cost the public a lot of money to date because taxpayers can deduct only medical care bills that are higher than 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income and then only a percentage according to their tax bracket.

If, however, the federal government forces the insurance industry to pay for prayer, a new cottage industry will likely spring up and Christian Science practitioners will likely raise their prices.

Even more serious is that the Christian Science church will use the federal law as another argument that Christian Science “treatment” should be a legal substitute for medical care of sick children.

There will be more laws like West Virginia’s religious defense to fatal neglect of a child when parents withhold medical care and instead rely on prayer-treatment “if fees and expenses incurred in connection with such treatment are permitted to be deducted from taxable income as ‘medical expenses’ pursuant to regulations or rules promulgated by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. (West Virginia Code 618D-4a(b)).

Iowa’s religious defense to felony child endangerment and manslaughter at Iowa Code 726.6(d) has been justified on similar grounds.

The government should not be forcing anyone to pay for prayer.

We urge Congress to remove all provisions in the health care reform bills that require insurers to reimburse for prayer or any other “health care” that is not evidence based.

Rita Swan is president of Sioux City-based Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD, Inc.), a non-profit national membership organization established to protect children from abusive religious and cultural practices, especially religion based medical neglect. For more information, visit www.childrenshealthcare.org

We can all agree that what we have isn’t working the way it should and the people of these United States demand a change, but we shouldn’t be so eager for something different that we allow our trusted officials to pass anything by us without our full understanding. We certainly shouldn’t allow them to encourage something as ridiculous as “faith healing” for the sick. If we rely on blind faith and prayer instead of proven medical science to heal the sick and injured then I, along with countless others, would have one less family member to say “I love you” to today.

Got back from the meeting with the doctor. Since entering the hospital she’s not gotten much better but at least she’s not getting worse. They’re going to move her to another hospital 150 miles from here which has better equipment and specialists to treat her. The worst isn’t over and the danger is still very real but I have hope they’ll be able to better help her at the new location.

I feel more at ease knowing this today but yesterday there was a particular nurse at the hospital I don’t care for at all. The way she was talking she might as well have come out and said “there’s no hope, pull the plug”. I am not exaggerating. I was not the only one upset; my uncle and grandmother who were present were infuriated by the nurse’s behavior as well. We informed the doctor of this and he agreed it was not what she should have said, but being a doctor in the same hospital he did not openly condemn her actions.

People are entitled to their opinions but when you’re a nurse you are not qualified to say who’ll live and who’ll die and you have no damn right to express your dismal outlook on the condition of someone’s family member to them. What she said was unprofessional, insensitive and by no means acceptable for a nurse to tell a worried family who are concerned for the health of a loved one.