Senate Health Care Provision Backs Faith Healing

The House bill will honor the Hyde amendment by forbiding any federal funding for abortion. Lindsay Beyerstein and Dave Noon note the Senate version has a provision for funding Christian Science prayer treatments. The funding will go to the Christian Science Church. The religious organization was founded by Mary Baker Eddy. She was influenced by Phineas Quimby. From Eddy's bio page at Christian Science.

Without a doubt, the Bible was the most significant influence in Mrs. Eddy’s life. She was a devoted student of the Scriptures from early childhood and gradually gained the conviction that spiritual healing was not limited to biblical times but could be practiced as effectively today. Chronically ill, she also investigated the medical systems of her time and gained insights into the mental factors of health from her study of homeopathy. For a time, her health improved under the care of Phineas P. Quimby, a self-taught healer in Maine who combined mental suggestion or hypnosis with what today might be called therapeutic touch. The improvement was not permanent, however, and she moved beyond his methods after his death in 1866. Convinced that genuine healing was rooted in God, not the human mind, she experienced a profound spiritual healing at age 44 as she read an account of Jesus’ healings. She spent the next three years of her life researching the Bible to understand how she had been healed and applying what she was learning to healing others through a system she eventually called Christian Science. She later wrote and published a textbook that is so closely tied to the Bible that she called it Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

The Senate version is allocating tax dollars for faith healing. The U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health found Christian Scientists have a higher death rate. I feel better if Christian Scientists don't pray for me.

Majority Leader Harry Reid has not decided on if he will add the Christian Science provision. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stripped a similar it from the House bill.