Ray Ciervo Ministries

You cannot turn the television or radio on without hearing about the “health care bill.” This has turned into quite a controversy and for good reasons. This is one time the media is doing its job, although, perhaps not for the right reasons, but the coverage has been ample. Media, however, is always concerned about ratings, not morals or ethics. What’s at stake in this health care debate is a fundamental difference in how people look at life. I’m not sure everyone is aware of that. Certainly not the media, but it’s how I see it.

From Obama’s side of things it appears he wants comprehensive health care reform. One has to ask, “What is driving that?” Is it the number of people who reportedly have no health care? Is it a health care crisis? Is it the amount of money insurance companies or doctors make that he wants to curtail? After all, he has been cited as saying he wants to “spread the wealth around.”

Cries from the other side sound the alarm that this is a ploy of socialist takeover. The government wants to run everything in our lives. Obamacare, as it is labeled, is all about the government’s intrusion into the lives of everyday citizen’s. After all, almost everyone with healthcare is happy with what they have. Why change it? Both sides may have legitimate fears and arguments. But, I think there’s something deeper.

What I keep hearing from the snippets of information I get from the proposed healthcare bill is a change in orientation in how we view life itself. There are two competing worldviews presented here. Obama’s heath bill comes from a particular philosophy of life, one that is touted every day in the halls of congress. It is simply pragmatic, consequentialist philosophy. Peter Singer probably likes this bill proposal. If it does pronounce a consequentialist philosophy, as it seems it does, it does not allow for the sanctity of life in any form. This would make Peter Singer very happy.

In the Charlie Gibson interview where he helped to stabilize Obama’s plan, a woman asked a question about her very elderly mother who needed a hip replacement and a pacemaker. Her question to the president asked whether her mother would get the medical care she needed. Obama’s answer was indirect but ended up with “maybe she should take the pain-killer.” In other words, “Under my plan, we wouldn’t spend the money on your mother’s quality of life because she’s passed the productive part of life. So, we’d just ease her pain until she passes.” This was more revealing than much else that was said and what I suspected about Obama.

He doesn’t believe in the sanctity of life per se, but for people who are productive or have the potential for being productive. He is not only pro-abortion, but a consequentialist. He believes that the end justifies the means and what is best practically for the greatest amount of people is the best choice. There is no biblical referencing in his thinking, no matter what he says about being a Christian. He is nowhere near being a “natural law” theorist or ethicist.

This is not surprising. His position on most things has come from a “progressive thinkers “camp. Conservatism as a worldview must be anchored in something solid. Unlike progressive thinkers who want to distance themselves from anything established. The good of progressive thinkers is that they would like to question things, especially things that do not work - there’s that pragmatic thing again. There’s nothing wrong with questioning - it is questioning everything that becomes absurd. Of course, they don’t want to be questioned as some of these town-hall meetings have revealed. Ironically, they don’t want to question the removal of things when they’re removing them either. There’s an old Asian proverb that say, “before you take the fence down, you ought to ask why it was put up there.” Sometimes the answer to that question may  be, “elephants.” 

So, the fundamental difference on how people look at life in this case is whether there is intrinsic value in human life and that human life ought to be saved and preserved as a priority, and determining worth by what a person contributes to the human race. Determining a person’s worth based on what their contribution to the human race is is looking at things from a completely different vantage point. This is what leads to euthanasia. Obamacare is not declaring euthanasia as part of its bill, but critics say it will lead there. It certainly opens the door.

When our moral conscience as a people takes a back seat to expedience, or worse, a price tag, we are in seriously deep trouble. However, this is the trend we’ve been on. There is no anchor point, no fixed position, no true north, just what will work best. The fundamental difference is whether we believe in the value of human dignity based on religious beliefs or whether human beings are only worth something when we contribute to the human race. Those who are too young to contribute or have outlived their usefulness have little worth. This is what is actually on the table here.