Guest Columns
Does one bizarre health care policy merit another?
Posted on Oct 19, 2009 by Jeff Tecklenburg.
By Rita Swan
Tucked into the health care reform bill passed by Sen. Harkin’s Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee is a mandate that insurers reimburse for “religious or spiritual health care” that is classified as a deductible medical care expense by the Internal Revenue Service. See S.1679, Section 3103(a)(1)(D).
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on which Congressman Bruce Braley sits has added a similar measure to the House health care reform bill. See Section 125 of HR3200.
The Internal Revenue Service allows bills sent by Christian Science practitioners for their prayers to be deducted from income tax as a medical care expense. The agency has declined requests to provide evidence that Christian Science heals disease.
Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy directed church practitioners to “make their charges for treatment equal to those of reputable physicians in their respective localities.” (First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 237) These treatments consist only of prayer.
These practitioners set their own rates, but sometimes their charges are indeed comparable to medical bills. In 1989, Christian Science healer Mario Tosto charged parents $446 for two days of prayer-treatment for Ian Lundman, an 11-year-old Minnesota boy with diabetes.
The boy died.
In Michigan, an insurance company balked at paying a Christian Science practitioner’s bill of $1,775 for her prayers on top of medical bills for the patient. The couple sued the company, which then settled out of court. Stephenson v. State Farm, 48th District Court, as reported in Michigan Trial Lawyers Association newsletter, October 1986.
The IRS has an extremely broad definition of deductible medical care. Any service primarily intended to affect “some structure or function of the body” is medical care. The “experience, qualification, or title of the person rendering services” is irrelevant.
Whether anyone besides the person paying for the service thinks it is medical is irrelevant. Bills incurred for anyone’s prayers or healing rituals are deductible medical care. (For verification, see these sources: IR Ruling 55-261, 1955-1 C.B. 307, IR Ruling 63-91, 1963-1 C.B. 54, and Fischer v. Commissioner, 50 T.C. 164, 194 (1968)).
Fortunately, most religions do not send bills for their prayers. And the IRS’s bizarre, loosey-goosey policy may not have cost the public a lot of money to date because taxpayers can deduct only medical care bills that are higher than 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income and then only a percentage according to their tax bracket.
If, however, the federal government forces the insurance industry to pay for prayer, a new cottage industry will likely spring up and Christian Science practitioners will likely raise their prices.
Even more serious is that the Christian Science church will use the federal law as another argument that Christian Science “treatment” should be a legal substitute for medical care of sick children.
There will be more laws like West Virginia’s religious defense to fatal neglect of a child when parents withhold medical care and instead rely on prayer-treatment “if fees and expenses incurred in connection with such treatment are permitted to be deducted from taxable income as ‘medical expenses’ pursuant to regulations or rules promulgated by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. (West Virginia Code 61-8D-4a(b)).
Iowa’s religious defense to felony child endangerment and manslaughter at Iowa Code 726.6(d) has been justified on similar grounds.
The government should not be forcing anyone to pay for prayer. We urge Congress to remove all provisions in the health care reform bills that require insurers to reimburse for prayer or any other “health care” that is not evidence-based.
Rita Swan is president of Sioux City-based Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD, Inc.), a non-profit national membership organization established to protect children from abusive religious and cultural practices, especially religion-based medical neglect. For more information, visit www.childrenshealth
care.org
SaneAndRational
20. Oct, 2009
Quite aside from the likelihood that insurance companies would love to pay for inexpensive prayer instead of expensive medical treatment, the REAL question here is this: Why on earth would the government authorize tax deductions for, or otherwise recognize "prayer" as a form of medical treatment?! If one religion's prayer constitutes "medical treatment," then so does meditation, snake handling, and any quirky religious practice that casts out devils. And think of all the payments for preventive prayer! This is insane — the only practices that should be able to qualify as "medial treatment" should be those whose effectiveness at treating medical conditions can be empirically verified by disinterested outside observers. Normal western medical practices easily qualify. Religion does NOT qualify because its effectiveness at treating medical conditions cannot be empirically verified; in fact the opposite is the case: Time and time again when people rely solely on prayer and refuse medical treatment, they fare far worse than their peers who go to a doctor.
congoheart
20. Oct, 2009
This article fails to mention that a government requirement to buy health insurance means that a Christian Science buyer would be required to pay for insurance they would never use, unless some accommodation is made to pay for their kind of treatment. This is just common sense to include a nondiscrimination clause. The same goes for medicare. Christian Scientists pay in to medicare for years. Shouldn't some kind of reimbursement be made for their taxpaying all those years? The dollar amounts mentioned in this article are indeed negligible compared to medical costs. That's probably why insurance companies and medicare and the IRS are very willing to accommodate them. This article is promoting a double standard because when a child dies under medical care the parents still receive bills–much higher than the ones mentioned here.
wgg727
20. Oct, 2009
The Constitution is clear that we cannot support religion, particularly a specific religion such as Christian Science. It is bad enough that innocent children die as a result of medical neglect, but to involve the taxpayer is outrageous. As to having medical insurance and not using it, most of the healthy have that problem–it is part of the concept of insurance.
Warren Guntheroth
SteveAnon
21. Oct, 2009
As one who was semi-raised up (we were converted after my mother was converted) in the Christian Science church, I would be willing to swear by all that's holy that CS prayer did absolutely nothing to abate, let alone cure, my childhood asthma attacks. Neither did it help my sister when she was suffering from a raging tooth ache.
Mary Baker was a money-grubbing crackpot whose doctrines must not be endorsed by tax-payer money.
malinari
21. Oct, 2009
this just might be the most absured thing i have ever heard but then again it sounds like a easy job, walk into a room, say a few prayers, charge a few hundred dollars.
msleeds
01. Nov, 2009
As a former Jehovah's Witness I am fully aware of the mind control used on these poor souls.
However if these Christian Scientists practitioners were practicing the words of Christ who said to his disciples of their benevolent works, "You received FREELY, now go and give FREELY" than this would not be an issue in our health care system. My husband received expensive insurance paid modern health care treatment to save his life from non Hopkins lymphoma 3 years ago. He had many prayers given up on his behalf- none of which anyone received a penny for !
Moebeast
02. Nov, 2009
It is strange that Christian Scientists are one of the few groups who were excused from the compulsory purchasing of health insurance under the original bill. I haven't read the new version to see if that is still there. I guess they will have to decide whether to buy the insurance to use at the practitioner's office, or opt out and save their money.