Greg Fish reports at [ weird things ] how:

the priest will charge you now

2009 NOVEMBER 6

Hey, did you hear this one? So a priest walks into a hospital room and hands a patient an invoice for services rendered. What, you’re not laughing? Then you sure won’t be if a little known and rarely mentioned provision in the Senate version of the healthcare bill passes and your insurance premiums are going to have to cover patients who eschew doctors in favor of faith healing. Basically, this provision wants to force corporations that already don’t want to pay for numerous legitimate medical expenses or act as a review panel for doctors to protect their profit margins, to cough up the money to cover prayer like they would cover medical treatments.

If you think this is some random passage stuffed in by a special interest group, you’d be only half right since it was crafted by Sen. Orrin Hatch and was supported by the late Ed Kennedy. Also trying to lend his credentials is the man who spectacularly fumbled his way out of a potential presidency, Sen. John Kerry. Why would Kerry and Edwards support a bill forcing insurers to cover faith healing? Because their home state is also the HQ of the so-called Christian Science movement which thinks that prayer can be just efficient as actual medicine so an already tax exempt organization collecting $20 to $40 per prayer session and impromptu Bible study would also get checks from insurance companies. And that’s on top of the fact that the IRS will already allow patients of their squad of faith healers to deduct their expenses as medical in nature. Oh and here’s the punchline…

“We are making the case for [faith treatment], believing there is a connection between healthcare and spirituality,” said Davis, who distributed 11,000 letters last week to Senate officials urging [for] support on the measure.

“We think this is an important aspect of the solution, when you are talking about not only keeping the cost down, but finding effective healthcare,” he said.

So if anyone thought that the US Republican Party was the only one that had taken leave of its senses, had lost touch with reality and was motivated only by the aroma of lobbyists' lunches, there is some bad news.