Two Stories...

Story #1
Shriners hospitals, which have provided free care since before the Great Depression, are considering closing a quarter of their facilities as donations stagnate, costs increase and the charity's endowment shrivels.
Facing hard times, Shriners may close 6 hospitals

Story #2
The center looked at how the proposals Mr. Obama released on Thursday would have affected giving based on 2006 data showing how much taxpayers deducted for charitable contributions. It said that if Mr. Obama’s tax plan had been in effect, Americans with incomes of $250,000 or more would have decreased their giving by 4.6 percent or nearly $3.9-billion. People at that income level claimed more than $81-billion in charitable gifts in 2006.
Obama's Tax Plan Could Cause Giving by the Wealthy to Drop by Several Billion Dollars Annually


Now what in the wide, wide, world do these two stories have to do with each other?

It points out the idiocy of government trying to run health care. There are plenty of private charities and religious organizations that do their part to offer free or inexpensive health care. Instead of finding ways to encourage a private sector solution to health care expense, Obama would prefer to run those types completely out of business by choking off their donations!

If anything, the charitable benefit should be expanded. More donations flowing to churches, charities and nonprofits would allow them to enter and expand into education, welfare and health care, reducing the dependence on inefficient and corrupt government bureaucrats.

Instead of hope and change, we get more of the same pathetic government "solutions."