If there’s one thing most people can agree on regardless of political leanings or religious following, from bleeding heart liberals to diehard conservatives, rigid Catholics to faithless atheists, it’s that the thought of innocent children being harmed or sexually abused by their supposed protectors or mentors is a rage-inducing test of our Stand Your Ground laws.
This is why we’re sure many of us are happy to see the formation of special Church tribunals for bishops who’ve been derelict in their duty of protecting children from the predations of sexually abusive priests.
A tribunal has been in place for priests accused of sexual abuse since 2001, but there’s been no such thing to punish bishops who’ve simply hidden reports of sexual abuse away by moving accused priests to new parishes where they’re free to continue their despicable practices. Their incredibly despicable practices mind you.
This marks a step forward toward holding religious leaders accountable for their actions, and we’d like to offer our generous platitudes unto the brow of Pope Francis who’ll be appointing a secretary and permanent staff to the tribunal.
While we’re sure the man receives quite a fair amount of respect from his flock as it is, we feel it important to award this Catholic holy man a measure supply from our own modest stores of well-wishing and such.
It is only appropriate that we take the time to acknowledge such a feat.
For protecting children and addressing the matter of sexual abuse, we’ll award Pope Francis a laurel. Because we’re sure we can all agree that preventing the sexual exploitation of children is the height of not being a dick.
In less honorable news, a study released Monday demonstrated that 13 hospitals in Florida, including Gainesville’s North Florida Regional Medical Center, have some of the highest possible markups for care in the country.
Notably, North Florida Regional’s average charge for services is apparently 9.6 times the maximum allowable amount Medicare pays for.
We’ll take this moment to point out that health care doesn’t work if hospitals overcharge you to keep blood pumping in your body, air in your lungs and your bones in their correct places.
While it’s understandable that health care’s not a free service, and Florida’s hospitals aren’t crowding up the top tier of that list like some horrifying swarm of locusts, you still don’t need to send every poor sod with a broken bone to the poor house.
We at the Alligator have some vague belief that trying to stay alive shouldn’t end with you screwed over the hospital table. It’s an honest belief which stems from the right of most human beings to the right of life and liberty etc. etc.
Granted, some of our readers may in fact have a vague interest in the matter unrelated to medical reasons, but we consider the matter a personal one.
For screwing people over the hospital table we’re going to toss a non-lethal or otherwise injury-inducing dart at our hospitals.
Because we’re not dicks and would quite enjoy seeing your continued productive contribution to society so long as you’re not overcharging the world for staying alive.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 6/11/15]
