Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of KeelyCare

Read about it here.

To find out why it's called "KeelyCare," see her post here.

Why is the profit motive evil in the area of health care? Why don't we allow complete unregulated freedom in the health care industry, so that anyone could offer their goods and services freely to anyone else? Free competition would ensure the best possible health care solution for each person's needs and circumstances, just as free competition in the personal computer industry is good for consumers of personal computers. Health care providers would not cease to be liable for malpractice, just as a building contractor who screws up can be sued. (Some people might also opt for arbitration as an alternative to litigation, but in any case there would be avenues to the redressing of legitimate grievances even without the ridiculous over-regulation of the health care industry that we see today.)

If you want to ensure that something becomes expensive and in short supply, regulate it heavily.

It is telling that Mrs. Mix asserts,

It's appropriate to use Romans 13 as a primer . . . if God's instrument on this earth for doing corporate good is human government, then Christians really ought to expect that "doing good" for poor people is a duty properly discharged by the State. Not ONLY by the State, but primarily by the State as the means through which social welfare is protected on a grand societal scale out of reach for individuals and the Church.

Yikes. I'm having trouble deciding whether I want to file that statement under Hegelianism or Christianity. Not only is that quite a contortion of Romans 13:4, she seems to have overlooked the fact that verse 8-10 says quite plainly:

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Love is in the nature of the case uncoerced except as a duty of conscience within individuals and groups owed to God Himself. Taxes that are used for welfare (including but hardly limited to health care) are taken by armed force -- the power of the sword. By no stretch of any consistent reasoning or biblical hermeneutic can "welfare" by civil government be equated with or considered a form of charity.

But Mrs. Mix DOES want to tell us that this is indeed charity. She writes of "Jesus' people [complaining bitterly] when asked to contribute through taxation for the benefit of the poor" (emphasis mine). Gee, when those IRS agents crashed through the door with their battering ram, dressed like a SWAT team with guns drawn and with large snarling dogs straining at their leashes, I never imagined that they were simply coming to ask if I wanted to contribute to a worthy cause.

The commands of Matthew 25:31-40 are NOT fulfilled by government welfare. Those commands can only be fulfilled by direct, personal involvement with people in need. (Some delegation of tasks might be legitimate in this context -- even churches have deacons -- but the personal and volitional aspects and personal accountability must always be present, and those features are decidedly absent from government welfare.) Of course Mrs. Mix does not think that the State is to be the exclusive agency of social welfare, but she does clearly see it as the primary instrument on earth through which God works to provide welfare. This all the more amazing when one considers Mrs. Mix's clear hostility to the idea of a State officially confessing the Christian faith. Somehow she expects that in order to be in conformity with God's will, the State must provide massive government welfare programs but simultaneously must NOT be confessionally Christian. (As that would be getting into the dreaded Theonomy.)

When you read above-linked post by Mrs. Mix, it is quite clear that she wants the government to be kinda, sorta Christian. And yet she does not want it to be confessionally Christian: that would be evil. Go figure.

The irony, of course, is that when the most powerful institution on earth is kinda, sorta Christian, but is adamantly NOT confessionally Christian, it is in fact a rival religion. It is idolatrous.

If you give someone a sandwich while failing to give him the gospel, that is not charity. There is no charity in that. But this is exactly what government welfare does. Even Bush's "faith-based initiative" fiasco expressly enjoined recipients of funding from proselytizing or sharing the gospel! How any Christian can support approaches to welfare that are antagonistic to true biblical charity is beyond me.

We don't need to concern ourselves with whether the government has good intentions or evil intentions when it engages in government "welfare" activities. Regardless of what the intentions might be, the long-term outcome of such activities is always evil. Regardless of whether they are intended or unintended, the consequences are just as real, and just as pernicious.