The latest issue of Faith for All of Life carries an expected criticism of the national healthcare issue known as "Obamacare." Medical doctor  Ed Payne, gives his opinion on the new government program.  He begins his article with the words, "In perhaps the most bizarre and heinous act of Congress in the history of the United states, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) came into being."
    Reconstruction thinkers are market driven.  If you cannot afford a procedure, you must live with the market prices and forgo medical assistance.  Dr. Payne admits he is greatly influenced by R. J. Rushdoony's volumes of literature.  Rushdoony did not like modern medicine and thought it left the divine out of the healing process. Rushdonny said,  ". ..the more the state knows about you, the less safe  you are."
     The article surprised me in its end of life ethics.  People like Richard Land have promoted the idea that there is to be aggressive measures taken to prolong life.  There was to be no withholding of food, water, or antibiotics for the terminally ill.  Payne seems to make the case that we let nature take its course.  The original fear from Obamacare in our region was that the plugs would be pulled early on the elderly.  (Or as Sean Hannity would put it, the elderly white folks.) Payne wrote that it is not heroic to keep people alive for only a few more hours or days of "prolonged agony."  He does think food, water and air should never be withheld in these cases.  I found it strange that this medical doctor did not bring up the issue of other types of life support and how aggressive care givers were to be.  These are strange views coming from pro-life folks.  
      Dr. Payne believes that helping those without resources for medical treatment is like stealing from your neighbor.  He compares this to stealing food from one family to feed another. This is a typical view held by these adherents regarding government assistance.  
     To Payne, there is far too much medical attention given to the population.  Rushdoony lamented  modern medicines and suggested it was more harmful than good to the population.  Payne estimated that over %75 of all treatments for patients are unnecessary.  These viewpoints tend to neglect the obvious benefits of modern medicine and the longer lives enjoyed by Americans as a result.   It is no surprise that modern medicine is referred to as "quackery" by these writers.
     Dr. Payne does not like the modern medical practices used by his colleagues.  He notes that these modern approaches to medicine actually promote ill-health.  He wrote that modern cholesterol drugs are wrongly promoted and used false statistics to justify their use.  This doctor actually believes that medical practices in large "harms" the body and does not cure it.
     He concludes that the solution would be for Christians to provide free services or there be a pay-as-you-go system.  He has little hope that this proposed healthcare will ever come to pass.  He does predict that activity like Christians providing free services will "likely be criminalized in short order."
     Thus according to Dr. Payne, not only will Obamacare never work, neither will modern medicine.