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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