Taxing religion to fund health care

If the Hippocratic Oath can be taken as the highest ideal of the medical field—separate from the economic structures that have built up around it—then something like health care should be judged by its purist ideals, i.e., the Hippocratic Oath. In that sense health care is more than a mere product. Those who reduce it to a mere product in the health care debate take this oath of healing and comforting out of context. However, if those who do wish to reduce health care to a mere product that is bought and sold in an economic market, why don’t they do the same with religion? Institutional religions are, by necessity, run in similar ways to businesses and their product is that of salvation. This is not so dissimilar from the way medical care needs to be run in a business-like fashion. Yet, I have yet to hear that we should treat religious goods as products or that we treat the actual organizations of religion as businesses. Perhaps, we should separate the highest ideals of religion from its organizational necessity, the same way we do health care. If that is the case, then religious organizations could be taxed as businesses selling products—products that promise healing and salvation. This new tax on these religious organizations that deliver the product of salvation, could, perhaps, go to help fund health care or reduce taxes for the middle class. Any thoughts?

About these ads