Nationalized Healthcare? (Part 3): Suggestions for improvement over the proposed bill

On last Friday's Albert Mohler Radio Program, Dr. Mohler addressed "Christian Concerns in the Healthcare Reform." The highlight of this show, in my opinion, is a section in which Dr. Mohler told what advise he would give President Obama about healthcare reform if he were given the opportunity to do so. The following is a quote from Dr. Mohler:

Number 1: Get straight on the abortion issue. The current legislation would, inevitably, end up with taxpayers funding abortion for those who are covered. And they could very easily- this administration and those in Congress- could very easily resolve that problem the same way they have for other government-funded healthcare programs. The refusal to do that means that they are intentionally making abortion coverage a part of this legislation.

I'd say, Mr. President, you really need to step back from government or quasi-governmental panels advising persons about end-of-life decisions, major healthcare allocation decisions, what we even call healthcare rationing decisions. And that IS in the President's statement; from, for instance, the New York Times on April 14th, the President said this: and I quote, "The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total healthcare bill out there. It is difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. That is why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance." Drop that. Drop that; because whether you want to call them 'death panels' or anything else, this is a panel that is going to be making decisions and making advice about the end of it. And a part of this is that the President's main adviser on this- who is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the President's Chief of Staff- is on the record; I've got about 3 inches of articles by Dr. Emanuel from the Journal of the American Medical Association, mainly, in which he comes up with all kinds of formulas about how this kind of allocation would work. And I don't think the American people would go for that even for a second if they understood it.

I would also say, Mr. President, when you talk about a major reform in healthcare, it's going to have to hurt to make the hard decisions about, for instance, staring down those tort lawyers and others who have such lobbying power- and you say, 'Well, the insurance companies do too;' that's true, and everyone should be held to account here, but I do believe that one of the main issues right now is not too LITTLE government involvement, but Rudy [referring to a previous caller], I've got to tell you, it's too MUCH government involvement, and I think this President could take the lead to say, 'I think we need to reform healthcare, and we're going to do it this way, we're going to do it that way,' and I think he could create a plan that would have massive bi-partisan support that would really help those who have health insurance now and those who do not. Because what we really want is to be able to have more persons who have better healthcare. And I just honestly don't believe, Rudy, that the government is the solution to that, but the government is going to have to be involved to some extent, no question about it.

I urge anyone reading this to listen to the entire program, available HERE.