Gotta have faith

The Democrats' 2009 version of Hillarycare now approaches 2,000 pages. Why did the collectivists want it enacted so quickly, before anyone really had time to climb in there with a flashlight and look around?

For starters, it turns out a little-noticed provision in the new health care overhaul, backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments -- which substitute for or supplement medical treatments -- on the same footing as clinical medicine.

While not mentioning the church by name, the relevant section of the bill would prohibit discrimination against "religious and spiritual healthcare."

It would have a minor effect on the overall cost of the bill, the Times reports -- Christian Science is a small church, and the prayer treatments can cost as little as $20 a day. But it has nevertheless stirred an intense controversy over the constitutional separation of church and state, and the possibility that other churches might seek reimbursements for so-called spiritual healing.

Critics say the measure could confer new status and medical legitimacy on practices that lie outside the realm of science.

Now, nothing here is meant to discount the value of prayer and other nontraditional treatments. But it's something else again to say that taxpayers remote -- both geographically and philosophically -- from such undertakings should be made to pay for them.

And that's precisely what happens when special interests grab the sleeve of their favorite member of Congress and demand that their particular specialty be included in the "mandate."

President Obama has insisted that his scheme for the government to take over American medicine will "save money," because government bureaucrats will determine that only the "best practices" are authorized and funded.

Really. And how will these bureaucrats with their spreadsheets determine which type of "prayer treatments" are most effective, and the ideal amount to pay for them?

There is a drawer in our office in which we have ceremonially entombed the 1,342 pages of Hillary Clinton's 1993 Health Security Act.

A symmetrical 16 years having now passed, the old dog seems to have worked his way around the yard, until he's now back digging under the same tree.

Time to bury another one, boys?