Oh, that's quite obvious.

Monetary gifts to the Church are to support the work of the Church – and ONLY as you have been prospered. If you haven't prospered, you give nothing. You must have been absent that one day you actually went to Bible study.

And we Christians do take care of our brothers and sisters. It is our duty as CHRISTIANS, not our duty as AMERICANS per the Constitution. As I've exhaustedly tried to get across to Kathy Kattenburg. This is why America is the most generous nation on planet Earth.

We give more to charity than any other country.
Why?
Is it because we have more social programs?
No.
Is it because we have so many government bureacracies?
Nope.

It is because we remain a nation of faith – and faithful Christians give without end.

Geez, Shannon….. I don't know about you, but I already pay TOO MUCH in taxes.
We should all be aware that with FICA, Social Security, Medicare, State Taxes, County property taxes, Sales Taxes, and all of the fees from other bureacracies (DMV, etc); add up to way more than 50% of our salaries.

In my case it's way more than 50% (if my math is correct). Don't you find that a tad bit unacceptable? I've worked hard for that money. Over half of my pay is not worth what I get from the government.

Out of the less than half of my pay, I must also pay for my family to live.
This is a form of slavery. I'm tired of it.

Now, don't get me started on the “charities” of bank and union bailouts.

I usually don't like to get into the details of my family medical situation, but I think I have to say this in order to express my frustration. My son is kept alive and well thanks to an innovative enteral feeding pump. As I read the list of taxed devices, I felt sure that enteral feeding pumps would not be among the list. Surely they would just tax things they consider to be unnecessary medical extravagances. Nope. Apparently, the government thinks families like mine don't have enough to deal with already. We should pay an extra 2.5% (which on some of these expensive devices is not chump change).

I understand that all of these new programs and services need to be paid for. I just don't understand why anyone would target those who are already paying out the nose for devices they need because they are sick. Please tell me this is just right-wing fear mongering. I thought the point was to make health care less expensive, not more.

What? The only groups you think are valid are those that are mouthpieces of the Democrats. Let me guess, ACORN, MoveOn, SEIU, etc., are your idea of independent organizations.

I work in health care. I see it every single day. The waste, the mismanagement of patients and funds. EVERYONE wants something for nothing or next to nothing. EVERYONE. Heck, I'm probably just as guilty as the next person. But if we keep going down the path we are on now, we are going to bankrupt ourselves, COMPLETELY. It's unsustainable. Absolutely unsustainable.

Everyone should be covered, everyone should PAY. Health care costs–it costs a LOT of money. But its the cost a civilized society bears, to call itself civilized. A single night in our SICU costs $5000–and that's before any medications or procedures. A single bottle of IVIg costs $12,000–and a couple of months ago, one of my patients got 8 of them, over a period of a few weeks. On and on and on.

Look, I'm just as conflicted as most people. I've gotten some heat for telling the truth about what it's like on the front lines, as one of the people who actually does the work of taking care of sick people. There are people who abuse the system, in the most egregious ways, it would make you sick. But there are far many more people who are not getting the treatment they need and deserve. We have the ability to tackle both problems at once.

We need to cover who we can cover, PAY for it, and then focus on the serial abusers of the system, either getting them outpatient treatment, psych treatment, placement, etc. It's not going to be cheap, but it's costing us a fortune TODAY to keep the existing system in place.

End of rant. I wish some other health care workers would post here.

In more ambitious days, it was presumed health care would be provided, eventually, on earth, while the truly celestial thing to do instead was to provide a guaranteed minimum income to everyone.