This from Vinoth Ramachandra… please read it all if you can, but here’s a clip of the end of the piece. What would you say to the question at the end? And I’d love to hear some Republican Christians explain this, and I mean that only in a good sense. One thing that has been missing in our public rhetoric is a clear Republican explanation of how to handle the problem of the lack of health care for so many.

Our health depends so much on factors outside our control. Being born into a poor family means that we have poor nourishment, less access to information about health and nutrition,  more exposure to pollutants, less educational skills and job security, lack of political influence, and so on. This is what makes the right-wing rhetoric about “personal responsibility” for health mere hypocritical cant.

Economists limit their discussions of healthcare to the provision of medical services. But healthcare involves much more than good hospitals: concern for social justice in healthcare forces us to look at everything from sanitation, waste disposal, and climate change to the ethics of TV advertisements and food companies, the quality of secondary education and disparities in income and work opportunities. Prevention is far more effective than cures- and prevention mostly requires cash transfers to develop education and infrastructure, whereas curative medicine absorbs real resources.

Most of us non-Americans are naturally nonplussed at the fury that Barak Obama’s health care reform bill has unleashed. It perplexes us that so many suburban American Christians who do not care one iota about a trillion-dollar military budget, and wax eloquently about being zealously “pro-life”, are now indignant about their state spending public funds to make the poor Americans more equal to them when it comes to receiving medical treatment and enjoying good health! Please, could some Republican party Christian explain these anomalies to the rest of the Body of Christ around the world?