I considered venturing out to support the People's Republic of Minneapolis team at the trivia title cage match, but decided to nest at home with a good laptop... Then landed on The Big Question's exploration of Michele Bachmann's health care positions.
Talk about a feast of trivia.
Let's start with the revelation that Bachmann's own Christian counselling business, founded in late 2004, doesn't provide health care benefits to its employees, who strongly incline toward applying Biblical principles to family counseling. One representative sample:
My goal as a Christian therapist is to help clients find hope, healing and freedom in Christ by offering empathy and encouragement in a sage, supportive atmosphere. I seek to combine my passion for God's Word and the practical application of Scriptural principles with my processional training and life experiences in a way that comforts clients with the comfort that I have received from God. (2 Corinthians 1:4)
Okay, that's cool. They're disclosing their orientation. They don't, however, disclose their prices so could compare them with the other one in town — which is a basic feature of the consumer-driven health care system Bush and Bachmann espouse.
"I like the idea that people will be more responsive to their health care purchases if they know what the cost and if they believe that they personally will have to pay for those purchases, individuals will make wiser choices and they may decide to forgo a test and they may decide to shop for a doctor that has lower prices.”
It turns out Bachmann would also like individuals to have more recourse to what regular Big Question commenter Eric Zaetsch calls "faith healing." One of her bills that went nowhere last session was the Minnesota Expanded Health Care Practices Act, which would ensure access to health care options
"that have not been generally adopted by a profession, or that are not generally considered to be within the prevailing minimum standards of care of a profession, or that are not standard practices of a profession in a particular community."
Which standards are normally applied in court cases to help establish whether malpractice has occurred.
Presumably, the bill would have benefitted the less-than-standard practices of Bachmann & Associates.
Company leader Dr. Marcus Bachmann is an alumnus of Pat Robertson's Regent University and earned his PhD in clinical pyschology from something the Bachmann & Associates site variously calls Union Graduate School and Union Graduate Institute. That institution of higher learning appears to be defunct as a psychology graduate school, except as a line on resumes.
Why doesn't Bachmann play up Bachmann & Associates as a healthcare provider? For all she says about it, the family small business could be a cleaning service or a palomino farm. She certainly inflates her record as a legislator.
The Expanded Health Care Practices Act was not Bachmann's only bill subjected to a justified mercy killing last session. In fact, only two bills which she authored last year received anything more than death by referral to committee. One, naming a stretch of highway for a patrol office killed in the line of duty; and one protecting a disabled veterans rest camp on Big Marine Lake.
Sounds to me like she's ready to carry the President's custard on reforming health care.
