What Price A Life?

There are times when you hear Republican pundits say something and you have to ask yourself, "Do they really know what just came out of their mouth?"

Today was one of those days.

Mike Huckabee in trying to explain why health insurance is a terrible idea equated people with pre-existing conditions to burnt out buildings or totaled cars.  Yeah, according to this former minister of the Gospel if you have a heart condition, tough. Diabetes, forget about it. Arthritis, you are condemned.  In Huckabee's eyes you have no right to ask for health insurance because you are damaged goods. Your life isn't worth protecting.

And it gets worse.  He goes on to say that if you have a life threatening illness like cancer and the cost of treatment would be expensive, then your life isn't worth saving as it would lower the stock-holders of the insurance companies dividends.

Since Rev. Huckabee has established that, at least in his religious conservative mind, there is a price on human life, I'd like to know who decides how much a human life is worth? The stock-holders of the insurance companies? The politicians? Political pundits, like himself - does he get to decide how much is too much? Who should live and who should die based on what's best for stock-holders?  Who sits on that death panel and makes that decision?

I wonder if during Rev. Huckabee's studies of the Gospel he might have gotten hold of a bad translation, as I see no comment from Jesus saying that the man with the withered hand could not be helped because he had a pre-existing condition. (Mark 3:3-5) He did not turn away from the man with leprosy because he had no money. (Matthew 8:3) He did not turn from the paralyzed man because his was a life threatening illness.(Luke 5:18-19)

It's a shame that Rev. Huckabee didn't pay attention to Matthew 25:41-46:

  41“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;42for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink;43I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’44“Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’45“Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’46“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Mike Huckabee suggested that health assistance is for the healthy, not the sick.  If he's paid attention to Mark 2:17, he would know that "it is not the healthy that need the doctor, but the sick."  But then again, Jesus wasn't trying to make a profit.  Huckabee apparently has forgotten all that he knew about how precious each person in this world is in favor of the income.  You'd think he would remember that selling out another for 30 coins of silver never really profited anyone.