SHELL GAME POLITICS OBSCURES GOSPEL TRUTH---SERVE YOUR NEIGHBOR

Those in this country who are shouting out against the small healthcare reforms of Obamacare {and any tax policies which favor public needs, over personal corporate gains of the 1% wealthy} need to take a soul-searching look at the Gospel. It is those who serve their neighbors who will find the kingdom of God. Christians especially, moral majority or minority, must focus on measures that feed the hungry, heal the sick etc., not those that maximize profits. God helps them who help themselves, but not others, is not found in the Gospel. {See Mt 25} God is not mandating serving the common good, but he will expect it.

Obamacare at its heart takes small steps to make healthcare available to more people and charges the whole community with making this possible. Insurance companies and their shareholders will now be made to re-distribute back to their policy-holders {and many who never had policies} some of the more than seven-fold profit gains of the past 20 plus years. The obverse coin percent of their total policy incomes they can pocket as profit and administrative, went from 3% to over 20%. This compares to the remaining percent of healthcare services delivered that they have cryptically named a medical loss ratio. See Moyers Report at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html .

The area in blue is what health insurance companies and their stockholders term their medical "loss"

The recent Supreme Court decision just makes it legal to impose more order and responsibilities on the private medical insurance companies. True believer Christian conservatives are supposed to be outraged about this slight turn towards “visiting the sick”—healing more of the sick? Fortunately most true believers won’t buy the hype.

Liberals as well as conservatives share in the charades. Also in this week’s past news was some liberal praise for preserving a lower interest rate on college student loans. In fact the legislation recently passed is part of a year-long program that will cost students over 18 billion in clever claw-backs of government sponsored loan availability and benefit provisions. This legislation is actually part of the budget cuts that Congress has been increasingly imposing—not the government coming to the rescue of students as advertized. There has been not a real savings to student loans costs—but only the prevention of a doubling back to previous loan interest rates, while new loan measures have been imposed that overwhelm these savings. This is well documented in a 6-30-12 NPR report http://www.npr.org/2012/06/30/156024236/the-flip-side-of-the-federal-student-loans-deal .

Both parties in the same game

The problem here is that the powerful government and corporate interests are engaged in a giant shell game with the American people. As far as vital public services such as health, education, security, and democracy itself are concerned, it’s now you see it, now you don’t. The right hand is not to know what the left hand is doing. There has been, an organized effort by both sides {but better leveraged by the corporate sponsors of the nominal conservatives} to win at all costs, by any means necessary.

Jesus is not kidding when He says “Woe to you rich…” LK 6:24 In this most wealthy country in the world, it’s not just the 1%, but many others, all of us, that must take to heart the admonition. We’re not really talking about balancing the budget, but about balancing the most powerful people’s lifestyle--upon the backs of whom? Look in our ghettos, in lines of unemployed. Look at the ravaged citizens of the world’s oil & resource wars. You’ll not often see their images. Rarer still will be your really meeting them face to face. Then how will we recognize Jesus at the last judgment?