Paging Dr Jesus

The Power of Pandering Justin Greene - 'The Difficult Case' "Christian Science treatment could not possibly heal as it does if everything were as solidly material as it appears. But since it isn’t, and what we see and experience so vividly and sometimes painfully is a subjective mental impression, this fear and false impression about God and His man can be changed by the omnipotence of divine Mind. Numerous instances of healing, in which so-called material disease does not follow its supposedly natural course after Christian Science treatment has been introduced to the case, help to make this more apparent. Malaria, typhoid fever, cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis, for example, have been arrested and healed in this way." - The Christian Science Web Site From the News That Should Surprise No One Department comes the revelation in the LA Times that tucked inside of the Senate Health Care Plan is a provision that 'require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses'. I guess this must be the tied in with the infamous death panel that we all recall so fondly, seeing that every day you can find stories about somebody dying because they thought the miracle of prayer was a better idea than a visit to the doctor. I mean, let's get serious for a minute. It's as common as muck, and not to put too fine a point on it, but the only time one of these sorry tales draws national attention is when a parent makes that particular health care choice for a cute white child. I figure that the prayer treatments have to be a special pander for the 'pray and die' folks, who some day may be required to get insurance even though they have no intention of using it. Something they can feel good about, being prayed over by a professional. And these Healers could be part of a definite growth industry. The Times says their services can be as cheap as $20 a day, but a cursory look around the web suggests that a guy like Miles Harbor is part of the cutting edge - $35 per quarter hour for phone sessions, and a sideline in praying about broken relationships and career dead-ends. Apparently this provision was inserted by the unholy alliance of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Orrin Hatch - two Catholics and a Mormon. There's no Christian Scientists in the Senate, although there are four in the House (including my undistinguished Congressman Bob Goodlatte, who is also a birther). Matter of fact, there aren't a lot of them anywhere; best as I can tell, they number less than 200,000. There's probably more Rastafarians in the country than there are Christian Scientists, but I don't see a damn thing in the Health Care bill about subsidies for Ganga.