Elder George

AN amendment to the proposed new health care bill in the United States requires that prospective health providers do not discriminate against people who have “pre-existing conditions,” which means already diseased people cannot be turned down by a health insurance company.

From a humanitarian point of view the intent of this amendment is to assure all people have access to medical care regardless of their state of health; a concept neither new nor previously unimplemented.

As a child raised by poor immigrant parents during the Great Depression I had my tonsils removed by a clinic. Free treatment at clinics was relatively easy to obtain and we could also afford to pay for personal doctors. People were relatively healthy then, prescription usage was rare, and mothers provided most of the healing requirements of families.

The cost of health care has now become a burden on most families for two reasons; the food chain has become polluted creating toxemia in our bodies, and high technology has reduced the cost of material things while making the cost of services prohibitive. These two factors are worthy of separate essays, if not books; however, the issue that I am addressing here concerns two questions: Why must the government function as the primary provider, the alternate provider, or the provider of last resort for health care? Why must people depend upon the government for their health and well-being?

These questions no longer arise in the political arena or in the consciousness of most people for it has already become a norm for the government to take responsibility for school lunches, care of the elderly, care of the homeless, social conduct, community relations, affordable housing, and a host of other activities people and families used to provide themselves.

In the past women provided the healing and nurturing needs of children and all family members while men provided the environment and means for this activity to take place. With the destruction of the family structure the government moved in and has taken over most natural societal functions thus reducing people to automaton production workers whose main focus is to obtain a job paying enough to sustain themselves. Meanwhile nurturing love has been replaced by governmental care and the ethics needed for family and social conduct have been replaced by the law and the ever-present eye of security cameras.

The Western world has made of a God of matters material and its governments serve as dispensers of dehumanized services to society.

No society can long endure without the three fundamentals of human existence: spiritual awareness, gender understanding, and family focus.

The Western world is devoid of these three principles and it is imploding.

 Elder George can be reached at: mensaction@aol.com. He maintains a blog http://mensaction.net/