Quote:
Originally Posted by Ledgem
I don't think anyone likes the idea of being forced to buy something. But when it comes to healthcare, we're currently stuck. At present anyone who's uninsured can receive care by walking into an emergency room, as long as their situation is dire enough (and depending on the hospital, "dire" is an extreme exaggeration).
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We're already forced to buy car insurance. I view being forced to have health insurance as a similar deal. If you don't have it you're harming society as a whole by freeloading off of Emergency rooms (which as you noted are not really the right place for primary care).
@Religion: I think Religion has changed a lot over the last 200 years. In olden days, there were two branches of Christian thought. A more spiritual branch, which focused on the personal experience of god, and the more rational, which was based on studying scripture and tradition, and rationally describing moral laws and the universe based on that, and minimizing the importance of direct revelation from god. For most of Christian history, it was the rational side of Christian thought that was dominant, while the spiritual side was quite fringe.
However, since the Scientific revolution, most of those who on the "rational" side of the church have ceased believing. Their belief was based on reason, and with the advances of Science the rational arguments for belief in Christian doctrine are very weak.
But belief based on direct revelation through spiritual experience has not been harmed, so that subset of christians have continued to be fervent believers. Because of this, all the christian denominations are being steered in an "evangelical" direction, with a focus on the "personal relationship with god", rather then practice and legalism. Christianity hasn't changed, but it's believers
have.
If Christianity seems less based on reason today, it's because the only enthusiastic participants left are the ones who have experienced god speaking to them. Without spiritual experience reinforcing your beliefs, it becomes very easy to be swayed towards non-belief. People tend to believe in things if they have good reason to, and without religious experiences, they have no good reason to believe.