Im just wondering: if my employer is a company owned by a single Jehovas Witness can that one person now decide whether my hypothetical son or daughter can have a blood transfusion or infant blood screening covered under my health plan? Better yet, can the business owned by the LDS church (yes they do exist) decide that since marijuana alters my mental state that they dont want to cover medical marijuana treatments recommended by my physician? What if my employer decides that stem cell treatment shouldnt be covered because the research required aborted fetuses? How about if my Christian Science employer decides not to cover doctors visits altogether instead suggesting that employees should seek refuge in prayer for healing? Its clear that religion should be partitioned from the profit-making enterprises. I know. That proposition interferes with religions ability to grow and spread their doctrine, and Im ok with that. Comingling the two is inconsistent with pretty much every religion I can think of -- at least if those religions are as genuine in their beliefs of not exploiting others as they prosthelytise. When the two purposes are intermixed, the incentives of the parent companies (i.e., the compassionate religions of our homeland) is fundamentally alerted at the detriment of our populace. Who knew that when the Catholic Church owned over half the beds in Washington state for patient care that the ownership change could lead to less access to care that consumers sought? Religion knows its membership is declining and so they have found a new way too force their beliefs onto an increasingly unreceptive public; through the vehicle we call business. Religion found a way to indoctrinate the public by depriving us of the choice of accepting their doctrine utilising market power to bulk up the voice of God. This is desperation. Religion in this country has become so fundamentalist that it believes that any mechanism to get people to do the right thing is morally permissible because theyve made this a matter of eternal salvation. Funny, because this is the danger that theologians and religious experts warned about for purportedly violent religions abroad (I.e., the ones practiced by people with brown skin); that by viewing a conflict as an existential threat to the faith, an individual can ignore morality while pursuing violence in defense of their convictions. It should be clear that American religion is about as fundamentalist as it gets. Religion not only wants the government, it wants the private sector, it wants the property, it wants to increase its reach at all costs to its core message. Its not about ideology, if it were, the marketplace of ideas would reflect personal choice. Its about socializing people (or brainwashing rather) to accept something on faith that almost all evidence contradicts. Its about making sure that they dont ask questions. Its about weaving themselves into the strictures of the free market to ensure that the reach of the invisible hand becomes the will of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Its wrong. And what we need is a divestiture. All assets and instruments of profit-making should be surrendered to the other god, the free market. Consolidation is detrimental to every sector of the economy regardless of whose hands hold those assets. By allowing religion to act as a nonprofit entity but still reach into the market by way of ownership over for profit entities, these overreaching entities will continue to exercise control over individual choice to the extent that we tolerate, which is far far too much.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 18:52:58 +0000
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