Monday, September 25, 2017

Mormons should be fighting Graham-Cassidy


Bold title, I know. After all, we're not supposed to be political.

Except that's bull. For every time that they remind us over the pulpit that the church does not endorse any political candidate or party, we still end up with a lot of members who are sure that their political and religious beliefs are inextricably linked. Making a connection is not unreasonable.

So, if your faith in eternal families leads you to value children, and want to have children, you should be against Graham-Cassidy.

Under Graham-Cassidy, insurers can charge an additional $17000 in annual premiums. That's if they cover it, because they would not be required to offer pregnancy, maternity, and newborn care. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was the first time insurers were required to cover maternity care. Insurers may cover more than required, but the balking at fairly basic requirements isn't assuring.

Maybe you can decide that following the Word of Wisdom will protect you from a lot of things. If you are not only not smoking but also eating lots of grains and fruits in season, that should decrease your risk of cancer, making you unlikely to be affected by $142650 premium increase for those with metastatic cancer.

It does help, but off the top of my head I'm remembering some really good members whose cancer did metastasize. Eventually it killed them, so I guess they didn't need coverage after that, but it took a while.

Maybe you can consider many afflictions to be God's will, and best borne patiently. Maybe you put a lot of stock in essential oils. Maybe you find it completely possible to ignore any problem that is not affecting you specifically, though that's a strange thing to pull from the scriptures.

Regardless, even if you can manage to not care about any other health issue, there is a good chance that you are going to have kids, or you have already and someday they will have kids, or that someone you care about will have kids; how many of them can afford an extra $17000 per year for the privilege?

Maybe you think that can be gotten around with midwives. That can work out, but a lot of these pregnancies are older, too. Isn't it better to have medical care available and affordable? Doesn't that make sense?

And if you are living in some of the more densely populated LDS areas, your calling now will mean more than anything I can do. My hippie-liberal senators and representative would not support Graham-Cassidy if I called them up and asked them too. Orrin Hatch, on the other hand, could benefit from having constituents call and ask him to vote against it.



For that segment of members who don't like that the ACA covers vaccinations, I'm sorry, please do this for the greater good.

For any who feel left out because you are not a Mormon, also sorry -- it just felt like something that needed to be said. For what it's worth, I believe similar reasoning should apply to many fundamentalist Christians as well.

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