Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Healthcare: Blue Pill or Red Pill?
Healthcare: Blue Pill or Red Pill?
Feb 28, 2026 8:25 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
Merry Christmas(*)
I have just returned from a week of holiday rest, and began tackling my 250 lb. email inbox. Flipping through a number of Christmas greetings and Fruitcake (Xmas spam), I came across a quick message from a dear friend, an email of the sort where the message is in the subject line, and the text is left empty (save mon signatures or disclaimers). My friend is a lawyer, I respect him very much, but I had to laugh at how...
Who Really Cares for the Poor?
Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks challenges perceived mainstream social orthodoxy in his new book, Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide – Who Gives, Who Doesn’t and Why It Matters. For generations it has been assumed that political and social liberals are generous towards the poor while conservatives are proverbial tightwads. At least since the days of Charles Dickens’ Scrooge this has been the popular view. Liberals continually remind us that they are the ones who really care about welfare since...
Never a Countdown on Effective Compassion
The “10 years after welfare reform” articles of this past summer are old news, of course. Not surprisingly, indications were that, like any public policy, reform hadn’t been the all-time poverty solution, but that policies had, in fact, helped a significant number of people to move themselves to self-sufficiency. A recent Wall Street Journal series highlighted the broad range of issues related to moving out of poverty. panion piece to the December 28 entry, “Economists Are Putting Theories to Scientific...
Images of plenty and want
The conflicting images I spoke about last week, the obesity of poor children in America, are the subject of a weekend piece in the NYT, “India Prosperity Creates Paradox; Many Children Are Fat, Even More Are Famished.” Of course, in India these aren’t the same kids: by and large the poor ones aren’t the fat ones. Someni Sengupta writes, “In short, while new money and new foods transform the eating habits of some of India’s youngest citizens, gnawing destitution continues...
Resolved
‘Tis the season for making resolutions. Today’s Zondervan>To The Point newsletter focuses on a variety of Christian resolutions, and includes a link to a piece from Leadership Journal on Jonathan Edwards’ resolutions (related blog piece here). One of my favorites: “Resolved, To be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberality.” Here’s a good place to start doing that. ...
2007
To all of our faithful Powerblog readers, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy, prosperous, and blessed new year! (And while I’m at it, I claim for myself the mantle of “First Poster of 2007,” which I believe should entitle me to some sort of cash prize…) ...
Remembering Gerald Ford
The Acton Institute’s offices are right across the Grand River from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum (and what will be Ford’s final resting place). Having passed these sites every day for several years on my walk to work, news of the ex-president’s death was especially poignant. National Review Online offers an interesting symposium on Ford’s presidency and legacy. From the other side of the ideological divide, Newsweek provides several retrospective pieces. A striking thing about Ford that I hadn’t...
Poor Kids in America are Fat
A new study finds that children growing up in poverty in America are disproportionately more likely to be pared to other e groups (HT: God’s Politics). So, poor kids in the US are fat…and in this they are just like the rest of America: “The whole country is struggling with this,” said Virginia Chomitz , senior scientist at the Institute for Community Health at the Cambridge Health Alliance . “There’s a lot of factors in our environment and our lifestyle...
2006 in Review, 4th Quarter
Our 2006 year in review series concludes with the fourth quarter: October “Do You See More than Just a ‘Carbon Footprint’?” Jordan J. Ballor It’s a fair question to ask, I think, of those who are a part of the radical environmentalist/population control political lobby. It’s also a note of caution to fellow Christians who want to build bridges with those folks…there is plex of interrelated policies that are logically consistent once you assume the tenets of secular environmentalism…. November...
Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth
Several weeks ago now I was offered a review copy of Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. After watching it on a cross-country flight in November I elected to let Gore’s expos’e sink in a bit before I pasted my thoughts more or less permanently on the web. Thanks in advance to Rachel Guthermann of Special Ops Media for being patient with me on posting the review. It’s probably fitting to end the year with a nod to this influential movie; it’s pelling...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved