Most of us have been fed so many meals of deceit and distortion that we are thin and weak, starving for something that is real.

Believe me, if the health bill is overturned, we will be back to exactly what we had before: double digit increases in health care costs, fewer and fewer people with health insurance, people dieing because they cannot afford a simply thyroid pill or high blood pressure pill.

This attempt to tell us to do nothing about social ills because we are fallen from grace would leave us paralized, unable to act or react in the face of any injustice. It is a cop-out. Jesus would never stand by and wring his hands in helplessness. It is a denial of the need to act as a Christian in this fallen world. Camosy is absolutely, totally, positively WRONG.

Where is the Palin evangelical / Donohue Catholic call to stop our endless wars to cut defense spending in the name of poor old Jesus?

Is this not a "Christian" issue as well?

How convenient you would cut health care spending but not for your Christian Oil Crusades against you Muslim "enemies" who you demonize while suckling their teats for your oil addiction caused by your obstruction of alternative energy.

Camosy's theocons believe we need health care rationing to better afford their Christian Oil Crusades to bring on the "rapture"

Just adding that this organization has info which will make you think what life would be like under Obamacare's rationing:
http://www.internationaltaskforce.org/

Very scary stories!! The world does not 'require' us to play God and take another's life or to have that person commit suicide; nor should it have any right to do so. Health care should NEVER be rationed. Re the story above: Little Seth's life is worth more than any amount of money. It is SO wrong for anyone to say "we'll let him/her die and use the money elsewhere." (Huh?? What have we become as a nation if we allow such a thing??) But that's where we're headed UNLESS Obamacare is overturned.

Again, please don't fall for this phony baloney bill. Call your legislators to overturn it ASAP, as well as to work to overturn Roe v Wade. 52 million babies dead is 52 million too many. Life is precious!

Here's the bottom line:
Obamacare is monetarily unsustainable. We can't afford it, so there WILL be rationing. Many doctors are already discussing getting out of the field, so there again, it's unsustainable. Bravo to the Republicans who are working to overturn Obamacare and save lives!

One look at Obama and company's view of respect(??) for human life, starting with the unborn, should sound a warning to any thinking person. Just look at their voting record on abortion, including partial-birth abortion. Hello!!

The far Left has a longtime legacy of trying to make it look like there is overpopulation, while the reverse is true, 'thanks' to contraception and abortion. So--hey! Isn't this handy for them? They'll not call it 'death panels'; they'll package it as something 'compassionate' when in reality, it's poison.

It's suicide, folks. Don't let it happen to you or any of your loved ones. Call ALL your legislators to overturn Obamacare ASAP. Let God decide who should live and when it's time to die. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to wake up! Good grief, who wants to be a victim?? Don't fall for this phony baloney, and for gosh sakes, next time, vote only for pro-life legislators.

Ethics have nothing to do with what's going on in American HealthCare...

It's about MONEY.

Money trumps Ethics every time.

Lawmakers are being bribed by Insurance Companies and HealthCare Companies.

The voter WILL NOT be represented.

For my Christian brother using the unfortunate cliche "burn in hell" a passsage from the New Testament: "He who calls his brother a fool is in danger of Hell's fire." How much danger are you in now?

Rationing is unavoidable in some form. I do not think one person is worth more than another. But if I an dieing with no chance of any real recovery please pull the plug rather than spend money on me that could save or sustain a child.

"Sadly, the effort that many Christians are leading against rationing misunderstands what it means to be pro-life..."

So being "pro-life" is rationing like it means capital punishment and pre-emptive war? Who decides who gets to live? Pat Roberson?

If this is a column on "Christian ethics" it reinforces the fact that right-wing theocons have totally hijacked poor old Jesus and want to use his name to control the rest of us, including determining who will live and who will die.

"Death squads" anyone?

Health care is currently rationed by how much money one has. The economic system rations health care, and it has been rationing health care for a long time.

No one should act as if - or assume - there is no rationing going on now. The real question is how good the system of rationing is.

Frankly, I would rather have a flawed human system - government - than a pure in-human system called capitalism. There is nothing of God or Jesus in capitalism. The real "death panels" are the Republican governors and representatives who tell us we have no alternative, who worship at the altar of capitalism.

Paradigm shift.

The tea baggers, republicans and now the Christians who discovered health care rationing in the Bible, are all on the same conservative page. Their ultimate agenda? (1) Eliminate social security and privatize it. No more SS payments. (2) End Medicare. Period. (3) Absolutely no Medicaid. (4) Eliminate all public assistance.
The above will make sure that most older people will simply starve to death, or they will die off due to lack of medical care. No one needs to feel guilty, but the job gets done. This leaves the affluent ones with plenty of super health benefits and will bring the US health services to the ‘Best the world has even known’. The funeral industry will expand and create good paying jobs for the healthy under-employed. The savings to the country will be in the trillions with which we can move our military industrial complex to new heights, and invade even China if we get bored. This will bring in another round of prosperity that will be the envy of every other country.
Mr. Camosy, look deeply into the pages of the Bible, and you should find plenty of passages to support this theory. There will always be the poor and the sick. They were there even in the Biblical times. The conservative way is to make sure that we do not see them, hear from them or deal with them. Out of sight, and out of mind, and they won’t bother us. Many of these ideas are already on the blogs here, there and everywhere. Way to go. You and Boehner & Co. are on the march.

Healthcare is rationed now. Good grief, are there actually people who dont know that? The more money you have the more healcare you get period - end of story.

Another morally bankrupt member of the so-called religious right. I got news for you buddy, you're no Christian. You're self-satisfied, self-centered, materialistic Pharisee. You'll burn in a special place in hell.

As long as the choice is between the individual and their chosen sounding board/s (family, priest, doctor etc.,)then the choice of dying from lack of care could be considered ethical; however, if some government appointed panel makes the choice on a cost effective basis, how could it be ethical?

In this case, it is even more unethical, because the money to establish the panel $1.1 billion was attached to the Stimulus Bill (ARRA) and was already signed into law even before the Health Bill was passed by Congress.

Republicans have latched on to certain Christian tenets because this gives them the appearance of being good guys. In essence they are heartless money grubbers who chose dollars over human lives. If you don't believe me check out what Gov. Brewer did. She chose funding for algae research over funding for heart transplants. How much more cruel can we get. This is certainly not Christian behavior.

If we want to ration health care, why not ration health care to the rich?

Health care is like much else in this nation--wealth determines who has power and the best care. I have trouble seeing that as Christian.

The premise of this article doesn't justify its conclusion: because there are limited resources that cannot possibly cover the demand, then we already ration. But then the author jumps to a justification of federal welfare and tax-contributed charity. That jump simply doesn't jive. Yes, there are limited resources. Yes, it is tragic that not every person can be healed and not every person can have the medical procedures they need. But there is also a finite amount of "free" healthcare that can be given. If you are concerned about access and affordability in healthcare, government rationing isn't the solution. Especially in respect to the Christian argument. YOU should be charitable--not tell everyone else they should accept expansive and notoriously inefficient government programs. Be the change you want to see. Private charity is the Christian way.

Pul-eeze! The hypocracy and self-centeredness of the religious right is boundless. You don't want the working poor to have health insurance because you're afraid it might affect your lifestyle - sitting there on your fat-arse in your starter castle. Not all who cry Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven.

And that is a particular concern if one distant entity (government) has great influence over both determining the accessibility to care and the procedures to be coerced into death. The fear is that the two would act in concert to seek cost savings at the expense of life.

Well, I wouldn't consider it a religious issue, but the question of how to expend our FINITE resources is one that, writ large, needs to be asked all over this country -- social, economic, political, environmental, etc etc.

The Boomers have all gotten us used to the "have your cake and eat it too" mentality, but we younger people will have to make some very difficult decisions about all of these things in the very near future.

Because, as much as it make strike us as morally shady, these are ALL FINITE RESOURCES. And finite resources are something that need to be allocated. And it's usually never allocated evenly.

So, how do we really address this thorny dilemma?

Rationing with the option of "voluntary" (more often coerced by telling people they cost us too much or have little to live for) end of life planning or euthanasia is what the pro-life advocates can not accept.

We actually have already been having a Death Panel and it's called the Insurance Companies. They are the one constantly getting between the doctor-patient relationship by telling what treatment is covered or not, and they are the one heaping mountains of red tapes to deny coverage. Try to read and understand their policy coverage, and you will see what I'm talking about. Or try to ask why certain treatment are not covered and you will get sent on a round-about wild goose chase.

So, a truly moral society would decide that it does not exist to protect its weakest members, but to provide resources only to those who can pay the most? Our society would decide that the rich are more deserving than the poor?

Compassionate Conservatism at its best.

Oh, please.

If baby Seth were still inside his mother's womb and she wanted to abort him because he would die shortly after birth, you Christians believe in FORCING her to give birth....THEN you would think it was OK to let him die!

Hypocrites!

Instead of opposing federal gov't panels in favor of state panels (the recent Arizona transplant incident) or current insurance panels, it may be more productive to determine what the panels' objectives are and rank them according to some fiscal and moral concepts.

If the author's two listed truths are deemed correct, then all the above 'panels' must eventually make decisions to save money, to ration resources. The question then defaults to what becomes of the money they save?

If that money pays the executives of the company bonuses or pays stockholders, well that's one way of investing the savings. If that money is put towards other people's health needs (not wants), that's another way. Our choice of which kind of panel to use should explicitly include this decision on investment of rationing outcomes.

Bravo for the courage to start a conversation on this topic. The quality of life needs to assessed alongside the length of life. Some folks want to live too long - longer than they deserve and at a cost that none of us ( via our shared health care insurance costs) can afford. But how do we determine when it is too costly to prolong life and delay the inevitable? 80 yr? 85? 90? In what condition of mental capacity? No memory? unconscious? barely responsive? I often wonder why Christians - sure of and looking forward to heaven are so reluctant to actually go there? Willing to delay their departure at almost any cost. Hummmmm? What if we thought of the generous act of refusing costly dialysis, or Rx, or surgical procedures as providing health care for a child that needs it. Giving up some medical procedures at age 80 might provide vaccines and routine health care to poor children who don't have it today? Is it not Christian charity to give them the gift of health -even life - rather than delay your own demise for 6 weeks? 1 year? Who will be the first to give this gift?

If you need a liver transplant, a heart transplant, but you can't afford it, too bad.

I can afford liposuction, rhinoplasty, and prosthetic penile enhancements ... and if I choose to have any of those, well, I just will.

My dollars mean my life is more important than yours. If you don't like it, get over it already. There's a death panel at your HMO, at your state medicare office, that agrees with me.

Thank you for this outstanding article. Your premise is 100% right, and is exactly why I oppose the PPACA. It substitutes the judgements of government (159 boards) for those of individuals. I don't challenge that this is the Christian way (Jesus told the rich to give everything away, because God was going to implement an apocalypse soon; Jesus was wrong.)

It's possible we can make an exception for children. Most people's health care needs are pretty generic up to age 40. (Thomas Sowell, who is 79, says he spent more on health care last year than in his first 40.) We can cover the tragically-born. But after that, I'm afraid people will have to EARN their life.

The real test, for me, of the PPACA is whether its promises come true:
1) If you like your current plan, you can keep it (and the Act won't drive up its price exhorably)
2) There will be NO net cost to taxpayers for illegal immigrants
3) NO recission or denial of coverage for chronic or pre-existing conditions
4) The net cost to the federal deficit will be in proportion to the net deficit of other government spending (I don't demand neutrality)

IF ALL these things come to pass, than President Obama has created the greatest government act since Social Security. If not, it's just another spending boondoggle.