Detroit priest: Let health care system's victims speak
The Rev. Harry Cook in the Detroit News:
Bring before the august solons a woman whom I recently met -- an African-American -- whose husband's petition for Social Security disability had been denied, though a back injury has rendered him unable even to do desk work. Her minimum-wage job has no health insurance benefit, but because of her job she has been declared ineligible for Medicaid.She cannot even dream of affording the hundreds-of-dollars-a-month tab for her husband's pain medications. The emergency room staff of the nearest hospital has told her not to bring him there anymore.
Let the senators, whose own health care insurance benefits are sleek, secure and government-funded, give her their set speeches about bootstraps, deficits, smaller government and the religion of the free-market system as she tries to keep tab on her restive children whom she had to bring with her to the hearing because she can't afford day care.
Let the foghorn leghorns go on with their patronizing lectures until the woman has a meltdown on national television, while the cameras pan the senators, seeing but not comprehending those things they have left undone and those they ought not to have done -- leaving it to the venerable Book of Common Prayer to observe that "there is no health in us."
Cook is saying there is a Christian mandate to help our neighbor in need.
Those who are advocating health care reform couch the debate in terms of what's in it for the average American, rather than calling upon the greater good in Americans. And that's because they believe that's a winning strategy, and a strategy that will get them reelected.
I was about to endorse this essay
http://blog.beliefnet.com/progressiverevival/2009/08/christianizing-the-health-care.html
But it repeats an untruth: "The impetus for our need to correct our health care system is not that it is failing the rich - it is that it is failing the poor, the fifty million or so Americans who have no or little health care and for whom getting sick requires deciding whether or not to risk bankruptcy to get healthy."
That's not true. There are 47 million or so persons in America without health insurance but about 10 million are not citizens, another 11 million either have Medicaid but were missed by the US Census or are eligible for Medicaid but just have not signed up (they are covered b/c nothing prevents them from signing up at any time), and another 16 million living in households with income 3 times the poverty level (for a family of 4 that's $62,000). See:
http://keithhennessey.com/2009/04/09/how-many-uninsured-people-need-additional-help-from-taxpayers/
16 million uninsured: That's the true size of the problem that Cook appeals to at the outset. As he rightly concludes later, this will imply greater taxes on those who can afford to pay, and he blasts Republicans for opposing that -- but I don't see Democrats being as honest as Cook that it will take an increase in taxes.
Cook advocates "A government-of-the-people-by-the-people-and-for-the-people insurance program." I think he means a single-payer plan. If he does, that's not what Obama or the Congressional Democrats are proposing. Some would like to see that, but the vast majority do not and the reason is that's not where the American public is. Obama did not run on seeking such a mandate.
Posted by John B. Chilton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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August 24, 2009 4:11 PM