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The pro-life House Democrats capitulated on Sunday night and joined on a party line vote to pass the health care bill, to the dismay of large numbers of American voters. Any compassionate person wants to make sure that all people, whether rich or poor, can get help when they are ill or injured. However, this step deeper into the arms of socialism may have unintended consequences that leave us worse off than before.
 
The US House voted to pass the Senate version of the health care bill on Sunday night by a 219-212 vote. Every Republican and 34 Democrats voted against it. President Obama cheerfully signed the bill into law on Tuesday, pleased to be ensuring health insurance for 32 million additional Americans, widening the social safety net to offer nearly universal medical coverage.

Heart wrenching stories abound about people who have been swamped in medical bills, unable to make their payments, or worse yet, who have been refused medical care because they lack insurance. Rising medical costs make getting sick a serious financial issue. The government hopes that this sweeping new legislation will fix some major problems.  Yet, many Americans believe the nation's health care troubles could be addressed without resorting to massive government spending and intrusion into American lives and businesses.

"We have now just enshrined the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health," the president said at the bill’s signing on Tuesday.

What will it do?
Effective right away, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny coverage to children with pre-existing medical conditions and by 2014 insurance companies will be required to insure anybody with pre-existing conditions. Starting this year, insurance companies will not be allowed to put lifetime caps on the amount of coverage any family receive and will be required to allow parents to keep their children on their insurance until the kids reach 26-years-old. By 2014, Americans will be required to carry health insurance either privately or through their employer or through a government program. Also by 2014, those who make less than 400 percent of the poverty level (about $43,000) will be able to receive Medicaid and federal subsidies to help pay for insurance premiums through a health insurance exchange program. People who fail to get some form of coverage and employers who fail to cover their employees will be fined. The legislation does not provide for a "public option."

Who will pay for it?
Individuals who make more than $200,000 per year and couples filing jointly who make over $250,000 will find their taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest, rents and royalties notched up several percentage points, along with an increase in their contributions to Medicare.

Roberton Williams, an economist at the Tax Policy Center noted, "It’s very clear that taxes are levied on the wealthy and the benefits will spread across the entire income distribution, with a lot going to expanded Medicaid distribution and expanding health insurance. One couldn’t claim [Obama] didn’t keep that promise" to "spread the wealth around."

In the next few weeks, Congress will work to pass the reconciliation bill that House Democrats are pushing, one that will add $100 billion more in spending and delay the tax on "Cadillac" health plans.

Unconstitutional?
If some millionaires aren’t bothered by their new burden, plenty of other people are upset by the legislation. Attorneys general from 14 states filed suit minutes after the President signed the bill, arguing that the Federal Government was overstepping its constitutional bounds. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum contends that the bill violates the Constitution’s commerce clause by forcing Americans to buy health insurance.

"It forces people to do something -- in the sense of buying a health care policy or paying a penalty, a tax or a fine -- that simply the constitution does not allow Congress to do," McCollum said at a news conference in Tallahassee.

Subsidizing Abortion?
Pro Life groups also believe the bill will open the door for federal funding of abortions. The pro-life Democrats in the House were the last major wall against the bill, but Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., leader of this pro-life bloc, agreed to support the bill after President Obama issued an executive order to maintain all prohibitions against taxes paying for abortions. However, organizations like The National Right to Life Committee argue that the bill is "riddled with provisions that predictably will result in federal subsidies for private insurance plans that cover abortion" and that the executive order will have no real effect. In a statement, the NRLC said, "The executive order promised by President Obama was issued for political effect. It changes nothing. It does not correct any of the serious pro-abortion provisions in the bill. The president cannot amend a bill by issuing an order, and the federal courts will enforce what the law says."

Other Concerns:
While the health care legislation makes it possible for more people to get on Medicaid, there is concern that there won't be enough doctors to take on the number of patients out there. Christopher Conover, director of the Health Policy Scholars Program at Duke, commented on the health bill, saying, "We already have a primary care system that's pretty overburdened; now we're adding tens of millions to the Medicare rolls and not significantly expanded the capacity of the system to absorb them. I think that's going to create real problems. Everyone is going to feel the impact of adding so many more people to the system without fundamentally altering the supply side, the number of providers." 

People with insurance tend to go to the doctor more often, which is beneficial since problems are caught in their early stages rather than later on when treatment might be more difficult and costly.  However, adding millions of people to doctors' waiting rooms means the wait time for an appointment will be that much longer.  There is already a shortage of physicians, and especially those willing to accept Medicaid patients.  Having either private insurance or Medicaid may not guarantee that an ill person will get to see a doctor when needed.

Businesses are also concerned about what the costs of insuring their employees will mean, even with tax breaks for small companies of 25 people or less. Larry Keller, CEO of the Asheville-based company Visual Intelligence & Analysis said, "My business – I have no intention of adding people and will use 1099 contract folks to do my work. I had envisioned becoming a real corporation one day employing people with excellent compensation and benefits but there is no way I would consider that now." 

Americans have had a wide variety of responses to the health care legislation, with progressives arguing that it does not go nearly far enough and conservatives regretting the deeper plunge into socialism.  Some are upset that it slashes Medicare, and others that it raises taxes and will be very expensive in the long run.  One CNN reader commented sarcastically, "This is cool. I'm just going to drop my insurance now, pay the $700 yearly fine, and then pickup insurance when I get sick since insurance companies can't deny me. I'll save a bundle of money every year."

People suffer from terrible pain and illnesses all the time and, and despite modern medicine the problems often linger for years without true healing or relief. While some sufferers never get better, others experience immediate physical healing through the touch of God. The reasons for God's healing one person and not another are often mysterious, but we do know that God is faithful, and there are cases when God has not healed people the first time they received prayer, but did heal them later. In other cases, the healing might have little to do with the knowledge of the person who was healed, but everything to do with God's working through His people for His purposes.

Kelli Thomas:
Our office manager's husband, Jim Mader, witnessed the healing of Kelli Thomas, a woman whose knee had been severely injured in a motorcycle accident. The cartilage had been torn and she lived in constant pain. "She walked in that day with her husband," Jim said, "and she was noticeably limping into church. After the service I asked her what was wrong. She said, 'I have this knee that's been damaged.' I said, 'Can we lay hands on you and pray for your knee?' So, she came up and sat down in one of the chairs in the first row, and Randy Hess and I prayed over her knee. We anointed her with oil and prayed a short prayer that God would bring healing to her knee. All of a sudden she starts bawling. She said, 'I feel something in my knee.' I asked her if she could stand up. So, she hopped up, and then she started crying really hard saying, 'There's no pain.' Her husband Chuck's eyes were as big as saucers. She said, 'I'm healed. I'm healed.' And she walked out of church that day with no limp."

Amy Joy Hess has her own story to tell about Kelli Thomas' knee. "It was funny," she told us. "Kelli was walking into church a couple of weeks after that, and she said, 'You know, sometimes when I'm at work I still limp, but it's not because I'm in pain, it's just because I'm used to limping.'" Amy Joy smiled, "You know, I prayed for Kelli's knee on the 4th of July a couple of months before she was healed. I prayed for her and nothing happened. I guess God just has a timing about these things."

Amy Joy Hess:
Amy Joy herself had also been instantly healed – from a herniated belly button she'd been born with. Her mother, Sherrill told us, "It was huge on this little six pound baby's tummy. It stuck out and looked swollen and almost ready to pop, about the size of those bouncy balls you play jacks with." Sherrill would wrap the baby's stomach with soft cloth to protect the herniated navel and to keep it from chafing. For some reason, doctors had said they would not be able to operate on it until the child was five.

"One day when she was about a month old, I laid her down for a nap," Sherrill said, "which was amazing because she insisted on being held all the time. While she slept, I rushed to do some ironing, and in the middle of it my mother-in-law calls.  She said, 'I've been watching the 700 Club, and they said there's a baby whose herniated belly button has just been healed. Go look at Amy.' So, I went in, and her little belly button was just as nice and small and normal as could be. She never had another problem with it. I took her to the doctor and he said, 'Yep. It's better. She won't need surgery.'"

We asked Amy Joy's father, Carl, about it. He said, "Yeah, when I went to work she had a herniated belly button, and when I came home it was normal."

Amy Joy herself smiles over the whole thing. "You know," she said, "It's not cancer or leukemia or something really huge and horrible. It was what seemed like a little thing. I know my grandmother was a praying woman, and I just think it was neat that God let her know across the county that I was healed. I appreciate it, because it's one of those things that is very hard to explain without God's intervention. It wasn't my power of positive thinking or some amazing self-healing thing. God just decided to heal my little belly button, and I am grateful for it to this day."

Jim Mader said, "The thing that makes me sad is that these stories should be happening all the time in our lives." Jim quoted John 21:25, saying, "As John said, there were ‘many other things which Jesus did…which if they should be written…the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.' That means that the Gospel stories we have are just a fraction of the things Jesus did. I'm not talking about living from miracle to miracle, but just that those things should be commonplace because of the Spirit of God living in us and through us. That's my hope."

When we walk into a dark room, flip a switch and the light comes on, it seems that light has no speed but is somehow infinite - instantly there.  That was the majority opinion of scientists and philosophers until September 1676, when Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer announced to the Paris Academie des Sciences that the anomalous behavior of the eclipse times of Jupiter's inner moon, Io, could be accounted for by a finite speed of light.   His work and his report split the scientific community in half, involving strong opinions and discussions for the next fifty years. It was Bradley's independent confirmation of the finite speed of light, published January 1, 1729, which finally ended the opposition. The speed of light was finite-incredibly fast, but finite.

The following question was: "Is the speed of light constant?" Interestingly enough, every time it was measured over the next few hundred years, it seemed to be a little slower than before. This could be explained away, as the first measurements were unbelievably rough compared to the technical accuracy later. It was not that simple, though. When the same person did the same test using the same equipment at a later period in time, the speed was slower. Not much, but slower.

These results kicked off a series of lively debates in the scientific community during the first half of the 20th century. Raymond Birge, highly respected chairman of the physics department at the University of California, Berkeley, had, from 1929 on, established himself as an arbiter of the values of atomic constants. The speed of light is considered an atomic constant. However Birge's recommended values for the speed of light decreased steadily until 1940, when an article written by him, entitled "The General Physical Constants, as of August 1940 with details on the velocity of light only," appeared in Reports on Progress in Physics (Vol. 8, pp.90-100, 1941). Birge began the article saying: "This paper is being written on request - and at this time on request ... a belief in any significant variability of the constants of nature is fatal to the spirit of science, as science is now understood [emphasis his]." These words, from this man, for whatever reason he wrote them, shut down the debate on the speed of light. Birge had previously recognized, as had others, that if the speed of light was changing, it was quite necessary that some of the other "constants" were also changing. This was evidently not to be allowed, whether it was true or not, and so the values for the various constants were declared and that was that. Almost. In the October 1975 issue of Scientific American (p. 120), C.L. Strong questioned whether the speed of light might change with time "as science has failed to get a consistently accurate value." It was just a ripple, but the issue had not quite disappeared.

Partly in order to quell any further doubts about the constancy of the speed of light, in October 1983 the speed of light was declared a universal constant of nature, defined as 299,792.458 kilometers per second, which is often rounded off to the measurement we are more familiar with in the West as 186,000 miles per second.

Birge's paper was published in 1941. Just a year later, Barry Setterfield was born in Australia. In 1979 he was 37 years old. That year he received a book from a friend, a book on astronomical anomalies. It was a large book, and near the end of it there was a section on the speed of light, questioning its constancy. Barry was stunned. Nothing he had read or learned in physics or astronomy had even hinted that there was a question regarding the speed of light. It was a constant, wasn't it? As he read, he learned about the measurements that had been taken years before, and the arguments that had gone on in the scientific literature, and he was fascinated. He figured he could read up on it and wrap up the question in about two weeks; it didn't quite work out that way.

Within a couple of years, one of the creationist organizations had started publishing some of Barry's findings. They were still preliminary, but there was so much more to this than he had thought. In the following years his exploration continued, and he read all the literature he could find. His work caught the attention of a senior research physicist at Stanford Research Institute International (SRI), who then asked him to submit a paper regarding his research. It was to be a white paper, or one that was for the purposes of discussion within the Institute.

Barry teamed up with Trevor Norman of Flinders University in Adelaide, and in 1987 Flinders itself published their paper, "Atomic Constants, Light, and Time." Their math department had checked it and approved it and it was published with the Stanford Research Institute logo as well.

Gerald Aardsma, a man at another creationist organization, got wind of the paper and got a copy of it. Having his own ax to grind on the subject of physics, he called the heads of both Flinders and SRI and asked them if they knew that Setterfield and Norman were [gasp] creationists! SRI was undergoing a massive staff change at the time and since the paper had been published by Flinders, they disavowed it and requested their logo be taken off. Flinders University threatened Trevor Norman with his job and informed Barry Setterfield that he was no longer welcome to use any resources there but the library. Aardsma then published a paper criticizing the Norman-Setterfield statistical use of the data. His paper went out under the auspices of a respected creation institution.

Under attack by both evolutionists and creationists for their work, Norman and Setterfield found themselves writing long articles of defense, which appeared in a number of issues of creation journals. In the meantime, Lambert Dolphin, the physicist at Stanford who had originally requested the paper, teamed up with professional statistician Alan Montgomery to take the proverbial fine-tooth comb through the Norman-Setterfield paper to check the statistics used. Their defense of the paper and the statistical use of the data was then published in a scientific journal [Galilean Electrodynamics , Vol. 4 No. 5, pp. 93ff., 1993]  and Montgomery went on to present a public defense at the 1994 International Creation Conference. Neither defense has ever been refuted in any journal or conference. Interestingly enough, later in 1987, after the Norman-Setterfield paper was published, another paper on light speed appeared, written by a Russian, V. S. Troitskii ["Physical Constants and the Evolution of the Universe", Astrophysics and Space Science Vol. 139, 1987, pp 389-411]. Troitskii not only postulated that the speed of light had not been constant, but that light speed had originally been about 1010 times faster than now.

[To be continued next week.  This article by Helen D. Setterfield was originally published in the July 2002 Personal Update NewsJournal]