They Want Us to Pay For Their Prayers!

        I just read an article that was posted in the Washington Post today, about fundamentalist Christians trying to get prayer forced into the healthcare reform bill, as something that they can force insurance to have to pay for!
          Here is the first couple paragraphs in the article:

The calls come in at all hours: patients reporting broken bones, violent coughs, deep depression. Prue Lewis listens as they explain their symptoms. Then Lewis -- a thin, frail-looking woman from Columbia Heights -- simply says, "I'll go to work right away." She hangs up, organizes her thoughts and begins treating her clients' ailments the best way she knows how: She prays.

          The woo-woo purveyors who are attempting to push this type of worthless faith healing charge $20 - $40 for this crap, and they are trying to get this put into the new healthcare reform bill so that we all will have to pay for it! Furthermoer there are powerful politicians and others who are allied with them, helping to push this into the Senate Bill. It was originally stripped out of the House Bill that was recently passed, and now they are trying to get it put back in before it is passed by the Senate. 
          The article states that "She doesn't see most of the patients she treats. That isn't necessary, she said, for her prayers to be effective.", and they want our tax money to be forced to pay for this? That really bothers me. Not only are they wasting our tax money, and at the same time putting money in the pockets of complete quacks who are taking advantage of people, but calling labeling this as healthcare is risking the lives of people, including children who fall for this sort of nonsence!
          You should click on the link in the text above, or click here, and read the entire article. These Christian "Scientists" (I wince at the use of the word "scientist" to describe these openly ANTI-SCIENCE people) use writings by people like Mary Baker Eddy as key tennets of the type of healthcare that they are advocating. Here is what the article has to say about this:

In her book, Eddy lays out an alternative system of health care, one with prayer practitioners and nursing facilities where attendants bandage and comfort but do not provide drugs or perform procedures as basic as setting bones.

          Today we have antibiotics, vaccines, advanced diagnostic procedures, and advanced treatments that are able to heal more medical problems than ever before,, and our average lifespan is higher than it ever was in the history of our species. Now, these people want to ignore our constitutional seperation of church and state, implement an alternative healthcare program that uses treatments from the dark ages, and pray the broken bones back into place!  And they want to force all of us to have to pay for it, you have got to be freaking kidding me!!!


          If you can contact your local senators, write letters, do what you can to stop government sanctioned prayer, and dangerous anti-healthcare practices. Write letters, do what you can. This worthless crap does not belong in our healthcare bill.