Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Healthcare: Blue Pill or Red Pill?
Healthcare: Blue Pill or Red Pill?
Mar 13, 2026 6:57 AM

Blue pill or red pill? No, it’s not the iconic scene from The Matrix, where Neo is given the choice of staying in puterized dream world (blue pill) or leaving the Matrix and discovering reality (red pill). It’s President Obama boiling down plex issue of health care reform on television last night: “If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?”

Washington Examiner columnist David Freddoso had this to say:

Read More…

Blue pill or red pill? No, it’s not the iconic scene from The Matrix, where Neo is given the choice of staying in puterized dream world (blue pill) or leaving the Matrix and discovering reality (red pill). It’s President Obama boiling down plex issue of health care reform on television last night: “If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?”

Washington Examiner columnist David Freddoso had this to say:

In last night’s press conference, President Obama seemed to be reliving that famous scene from The Matrix. The main character is offered a choice between a red pill that makes him see reality for what it is, and a blue pill that allows him to continue living in a pleasant world of illusions.

Last night, President Obama appeared to have taken the blue pill before his press conference. How else could he convince himself, the Congressional Budget Office’s numbers notwithstanding, that his health care reform bill will not increase both health care costs and the federal deficit? How else can he continue to make the argument that a massive expansion of government spending on health care will solve rather than exacerbate the current problems? How can he repeatedly express such absolute certainty that such a measure will easily pay for itself several times over in the long run? Why can he not at least acknowledge the possibility that it will e a costly and useless trillion-dollar boondoggle that follows in the footsteps of his stimulus package?

For an Acton Commentary on the problems with socialized medicine, see this piece by Dr. Donald Condit.

Also, Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a health policy research organization, spoke at the Acton Lecture Series on the topic “Can We Repair What’s Wrong with our Health Care System through Christian Principles?” An online video of this excellent speech is available here.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Holiday Minnie Mouse, good. Baby Jesus, not.
e all ye faithful? Seems like ridding City Hall of Nativity scenes and other religious art is not enough for some people. Now, homeowner associations are getting into the act. In suburban Detroit, the Samona family was recently notified by their subdivision’s guardians of mon good (and lawn decorations) to remove an outdoor plastic creche. Nothing was said about some other figures on the lawn, including a holiday Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, and Mr. and Mrs. Claus. The Detroit...
Farm subsidies under fire
The Financial Times reports that generous farm subsidies in the United States and Western Europe are increasingly beleaguered. If the US and Europe don’t voluntarily eliminate the unfair advantage their agriculture producers enjoy in the global market, then developing nations are likely to take legal action through the WTO. No one wants to see American agriculture destroyed, but the injustice of developed-nation subsidies in light of the struggles of developing-nation farmers is hard to deny. The ramifications of ag subsidy...
‘Addio, Dolce Vita’
That’s the title of this week’s survey of Italy in The Economist. The news for Italy is quite depressing. Its economic growth is the slowest in Europe, behind even France and Germany, its productivity is down while its wages are up, and a massive demographic crisis looms. The survey is extensive, covering the structural, political and even cultural impediments today’s Italy faces. These include a tendency to blame Europe and China for Italian woes, an over-reliance on small- and medium-sized...
Instant classics
This made me think of this. If the British pany were really smart, they’d just negotiate a price to use the Book-A-Minute Classics. The versions are a bit different, though. Here’s Dante’s Inferno: “Some woman puts Dante through Hell. THE END.” These are really quite good. I especially like the War and Piece classic. ...
The daily dose
A piled by Matt Donnelly at Science & Theology News calls the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance’s recent formation a continuation of “the recent and laudable trend of faith-based organizations making a serious attempt to grapple with the religious basis for environmental stewardship.” The section also provides links to their coverage of a number of other aspects of “the intersection of religious belief and environmental protection.” ...
The digital divide in the developing world
A key barrier to economic growth in the developing world is reliable access to the global information network: the Internet. A UN-sponsored study, “Information Economy Report 2005” by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, (PDF) shows that one of the features of the digital divide between the developing and the developed world has to do with the cost of high-bandwidth Internet access. The report says “that the smaller, e Internet markets in developing countries, particularly in Africa, have...
God and man in the environmental debate
In this week’s Acton Commentary, Jay Richards looks at the ingrained tendency of many environmentalists to view man’s place in nature as fundamentally destructive. For people of faith, this is simply bad theology. Jay examines this anthropological error, and highlights the work of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, a new coalition that is working to deepen religious reflection on environmental questions. Environmental policies founded on faulty fundamentals can lead to disastrous consequences, as Jay points out. Every environmental policy implemented by...
Disaster relief updates
On my drive to work this morning, I began wondering about all those relief efforts that were launched after the December 2004 Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. So I started the day at the office by looking for reports/numbers online, trying to find some indication of how money was being spent and what progress was being made. I found a great website called ReliefWeb which has really opened my eyes to the hundreds of other problems around the world that...
Freedom to give
The Salvation Army Bell Ringers are now audibly calling us to seasonal charitable giving. But the pleas from multiple organizations for our benevolence—from both unprecedented terrorist attacks and natural disasters to the ever-present needs of our less fortunate neighbors—have been virtually ongoing since 9/11. However, amidst all the research about how much Americans give and who needs what the most, and the gloom and doom rhetoric of so-called donor fatigue, it is appropriate to appreciate another principle as important as...
Politics 101
The first lesson of Politics 101: When in trouble, look to your base. That’s what House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert is apparently doing, in his recent push to make sure the lighted tree put up in December on the U.S. Capitol be returned to its name of the last decade, the “Capitol Christmas Tree.” Its name had been the stunningly interesting and descriptive “Holiday Tree.” You can expect any court cases involved over so-called “Christmas” trees to find the primarily...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved