By Walter Bowne
In a move that sent its stock price up more than 300 points, General Motors announced it was officially adopting the faith and practices of Full Bible Deliverance Church of the Holy Redeemer – a relatively unknown religious group based in Aloicious, Georgia.
CEO Mary Mara said yesterday that as of July 1st, all employees of General Motors will no longer have medical benefits. “With our new religious affiliation,” she said to a room packed with reporters, “we no longer believe in medical treatment. We trust in God to deliver us from cancer and tumors and nasty things like that.”
The tremendous savings in medical benefits, in the tens of millions of dollars, it has been reported, will be used to invest in needed infrastructure, research and development, and CEO compensation.
“It was obvious that Wall Street approved of our action,” Mary Mara said. “Have you seen the reaction? They are doing the Lambada amongst the ticker tape!”
The move comes on the heels of the recent Supreme Court ruling that bars employers from granting medical procedures in health care policies that go against religious beliefs.
Full Bible Deliverance Church of the Holy Redeemer believes that all things come from God: trees, ants, the moon, the stars, babies delivered by angels, and cures for deadly diseases. Full Bible also does not believe in drugs of any kind, such as common aspirin or allergy medicine.
“If God wants me to sneeze when I’m outside,” a Full Bible member said. “Then who am I to take a pill and go against His plan for me?”
The move by General Motors, say Wall Street analysts, will surely open the doors to other companies who will shed costly employee benefit programs by trusting in God instead. Other blue stock companies, as well as tech companies, have been flooding the offices of various faith-based religious organizations with calls for enrollment forms.
“It’s so great to see so many CEOs coming to the Lord,” said Lighthouse Prayer and Guidance System Reverend Albert D. Snickerworth. He said it’s wrong-headed to see this just about savings. “It’s more about the law of the survival of the fittest,” he said. “Corporations want healthy people, healthy people who have faith and who God grants health to. The sick are never good for business, or for doing the Lord’s work.”
“The Supreme Court, in all its majesty,” said one General Motor employee, “saw how essential it was to allow corporations to know what is best for its employees.” He mentioned the likes of The British East India Company and Standard Oil, who always did right for their employees.
With recent SCOTUS decisions, the e pluribus unum is not just a hollow slogan. General Motors has many employees, but acts as one entity – and that one entity can act on its individual beliefs.
General Motor employee John Jenkins says he hates when Big Brother gets in the way of his business, but big businesses like General Motors are a different matter. “Their business is my business. That’s the America Way!”
“It’s a new day,” said another GM employee. “If I break a leg, instead of going to a costly hospital to have some over-priced doc who thinks he’s better than I am, I will just crawl out back, kneel on my one good knee, and pray – like Mary Mara wants me to.” He said if God doesn’t mend his leg, why should it cost GM anything? How was it their fault that he played soccer with his young boy?
Mary Mara sees this as a pivotal moment in America. “For once and for all, we have established just the type of country the Founders wanted – a place of free enterprise, stoic individualism, and religious liberty that counteracts the evils of the state.”