Joyce Hottenstein, a small business owner from Rutland, and Peter Briggs, a dairy farmer from Addison, discuss health care sharing ministries and the adversities they face due to the punishing costs of health insurance in Vermont.
Meg Hansen is the creator and host of “Dialogues with Meg Hansen” on the YCN network.
Image courtesy of state of Vermont
My experience and outcome as an employer providing healthcare for employees was just as Ms. Hottenstein described. Biblical or Entrepreneurial, any independent, autonomous choices in healthcare are resisted by centralized government elitists (i.e. socialists) for two reasons.
First: there is no accountability in socialism for its failed policies. In fact, with only one methodology (monopolies), there are no alternatives with which to compare. As Winston Churchill opined, “…its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
Second: once in power, politicians, the courts, and the special interest groups handling them (e.g. Blue Cross/Blue Shield), succeed because they enforce policies that benefit at least 51% of those who vote. When 25.5% of the voting public receives entitlements and 25.5% derive their livelihood from administering those benefits, a tyranny by the majority is inevitable. As Benj. Franklin said: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”
Be it healthcare or education (the two largest economic segments in Vermont’s GDP by far), special interest groups like BCBS and VT Health Connect, or the NEA (the teacher’s union) and the State Board of Education, have managed to stack the legislative deck with corrupt politicians and judges. Their policies reflect an appeal to ignorance and are driving out independent, self-sustaining Vermonters while encouraging growth in the entitlement community. A dysfunctional majority now exists and, unfortunately, the only way to stop the cronyism is to let it run its course and bankrupt the State. I wish I had a better resolution to the problem. But the meager conservative, free-market movement, encouraged by True North, Common Sense Radio, The Ethan Allen Institute and the rest of us who continue to spit into the wind with our commentary, appear unable to stem the tide.
https://www.chministries.org/
The Biblical solution to health care,,,affordable, and realistic