Culture

Greek Health System Opts for Amputation as Money-Saver

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This is what happens with technocrats in control.

This Saturday, one of Greece’s most respected newspapers, To Vima, reported that the nation’s largest government health insurance provider would no longer pay for special footwear for diabetes patients. Amputation is cheaper, says the Benefits Division of the state insurance provider.

The new policy was announced in a letter to the Pan-Hellenic Federation of People with Diabetes. The Federation disputes the science behind the decision of the Benefits Division. In a statement, the group argues that the decision is contrary to evidence as presented in the international scientific literature.

Greece’s National Healthcare System was created in the early 1980s, during the tenure of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. Papandreou, an academic, won election under the slogan, Αλλαγή, which is the Greek word for Change.

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Some thoughts on the Wesley J. Smith lecture at St. Tikhon’s Seminary

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I listened to Wesley J. Smith’s lecture a few days ago and have been thinking about it ever since (listen to it here). Some thoughts in no particular order:

1. It is very good that St. Tikhon’s invited Smith to speak for several reasons. First it introduces the seminarians to the concrete questions debated in the larger culture and thus the hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices where end of life decisions are made. They will be called on to consult with families to help make these decisions and must be able to recognize the ideas behind the differing opinions that health care professionals offer in these situations.
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Speaking of hijacking the language…

Wesley J. Smith – Bioethics: Creating a Culture of Death

Orthodox Priest: Thieves Hijacking the Language of the Christian Moral Tradition

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That’s the title of my latest essay on Catholic Online. (Click here for the nice lead in they gave me, and here for the article). Full text below.

By Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse

NAPLES, FL. (Catholic Online) – In a recent Catholic Online article (Social Justice: Take Back the Term from the Thieves and Build a New Catholic Action) Deacon Keith Fournier writes about a question he was asked at a recent conference:

…the host of the conference made a suggestion that we get rid of the term “Social Justice” because it is now used by ‘the left”. He asked for my thoughts. I strongly disagreed. I insisted that we take back the phrase from those who have stolen it, either on the “the right” or “the left”. He then suggested the Church does not use the phrase “Social Justice”. An attendee did a “google” search of the Vatican documents on his handheld device and reported it was used thousands of times in the magisterial teaching of the Church.

Fournier is right on two counts: The Christian moral vocabulary properly belongs to Christians, and we should not cede the vocabulary to the thieves.

The problem is not limited to the term “Social Justice” alone. Many of the familiar terms drawn from the moral tradition are used in ways that are different today than in generations past. Nothing is sacrosanct. For example, as recently as a decade ago the idea that same-sex partners who “loved” each other had a “right” to “marriage” was inconceivable. Today many people shrug it off. To many, the “redefinition” of marriage seems self-evidently true and morally proper.

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