The Challenge of Health Care

(The largest challenge of our time is health care. The debate rages on. Two prophetic voices offer thought and challenge for such a time as this. I wanted to share Jim Wallis of Sojourners comments and the challenge of good friend and masterful preacher John Killinger because they both are right on target.)

Truth-telling and Responsibility in Health Care

I have said that one important moral principle for the health-care debate is truth-telling. For decades, the physical health and well-being of our country has been a proxy battle for partisan politics. Industry interests and partisan fighting are once again threatening the current opportunity for a public dialogue about what is best for our health-care system. What we need is an honest and fair debate with good information, not sabotage of reform with half-truths and misinformation.

Yet in recent weeks, conservative radio ads have claimed that health-care reform will kill the elderly (it won’t), that it will include federal funding for abortion (it doesn’t), and that it is a socialist takeover of the health-care system (it isn’t). The organizations promoting these claims, including some Religious Right groups, are either badly misinformed, or they are deliberately distorting reality.

A particularly egregious example is an ad that the Family Research Council has run in selected states. It depicts an elderly man and his wife sitting at their kitchen table. He turns to his wife and says, “They won’t pay for my surgery. What are we going to do?” He continues, “and to think that Planned Parenthood is included in the government-run health-care plan and spending tax dollars on abortion. They won’t pay for my surgery, but we’re forced to pay for abortion.”

These kinds of ads should be stopped. They do not contribute to the debate that is needed to ensure that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care. It is rather exactly the kind of misinformation campaign that could destroy needed reform. We should all denounce these ads and urge that the debate be about the real issues.

President Obama said, “I think we also have a tradition of, in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care. Rather than wade into that issue at this point, I think that it's appropriate for us to figure out how to just deliver on the cost savings, and not get distracted by the abortion debate at this station.” There is growing agreement from both pro-life and pro-choice that health-care reform should not include funding for abortion, but should be abortion-neutral. We will continue monitoring the ongoing legislative process to maintain that principle.

Even worse than advertising, since Congress has gone into its summer recess, organized protests are being mounted at local town hall meetings. The Washington Post reported this morning that Democrats have been met by taunts, jeers, and, in one case, an effigy. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) was confronted by some 200 people holding signs calling him a "traitor to Texas" and a "devil to all people." And the Post cited a “‘strategy memo,’ issued by the Connecticut-based group Right Principles, which calls on conservatives to ‘pack the hall’ and ‘yell out and challenge’ lawmakers.”

We must all say loudly and strongly that misinformation and angry mobs are not how democracy functions. While freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are certainly our rights, those rights must always be exercised with responsibility and accountability.Health-care reform that will provide quality, affordable health care for all Americans is essential. It is a moral imperative that in a nation as prosperous as ours, no American should go without health care, especially the poorest and most vulnerable among us. Reasonable people may differ on how best to accomplish this goal, and I welcome the rigorous policy debate currently under way in the House and Senate. But in the final analysis, it should be a moral priority for all of us.

I urge you to write your member of Congress, attend local town meetings in your communities, and respectfully but strongly make these points. It is our moral obligation as people of faith.

(Here are Killinger's fine words)

PASTORS ARE ALWAYS TALKING ABOUT PROPHETIC PREACHING and when and how
to do it. Well, the when is NOW! There hasn't been an opportunity
like this in our lifetimes, when the U.S. Congress is poised to act or
(perish the thought) not act on the question of HEALTH CARE FOR THE
MASSES.

Forget all the smokescreens thrown up by those who represent the HMOs,
hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies, to the effect that
75% of Americans are satisfied with their present health care
arrangements; that having comprehensive health care would break the
bank; that a public option would weaken other plans and disincentivize
physicians; that Congress couldn't make a paper airplane that could
fly, much less create a health system that would work.

THE IMPORTANT THING is that WE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO CLOSE to crafting
legislation that would enable the poor of America––45 million strong––
to live with actual health care and stop depending on ER treatment and
over-the-counter medications to get by when they and their children
fall seriously ill. What is it going to take for Congress to find the
courage to step up to the plate and hit this one out of the park?
Nothing short of a unified, no-holds-barred push from the American
people!

So why are the pastors of America's churches so quiet about this? IT
ISN'T A POLITICAL ISSUE. They don't have to worry about the thin and
often wavering or broken line between politics and religion. They
should be mounting their soap boxes and crying out to their
congregations, "NOW IS THE TIME FOR EVERY CHRISTIAN IN AMERICA TO RISE
TO THE AID OF THE POOR!" We can't eliminate poverty; Jesus was right
when he said we would always have the poor with us. But we can damned
well do something now as a people to make life a little easier for our
poor and see that they are accorded basic health care, an amenity most
of us enjoy as citizens of the richest industrial nation in the world!!

Any pastor who does not speak out on this matter OUGHT TO BE DEFROCKED
FOR REMAINING SILENT.

Any pastor who does not demand that Congress act now to relieve the
poor of medical injustice is NOT WORTHY TO IMAGINE THAT HE OR SHE IS A
FOLLOWER OF JESUS, WHO WAS ALWAYS A FRIEND OF THE POOR AND THE
OUTCAST, whatever it cost him in social status or coziness with the
wealthier people in his audience.

Any pastor who finks out on this one should quietly turn in his or her
ordination papers and slink off into the highways and byways to perish
of shame and self-disgust as A TRAITOR TO GOD AND THE ANGELS IN HEAVEN.

I PROPOSE that the pastors who have the right stuff, the ones who can
still muster a sense of faithfulness to Christ and his little ones,
should designate Sunday, September 6, as HEALTH CARE SUNDAY in their
churches, and use their pulpits on that day to reexamine three things
for their congregations: (1) the role of Jesus as healer; (2) the love
of Jesus for the poor and very poor; and (3) the saying of Jesus that
"INASMUCH AS YOU HAVE DONE IT FOR ONE OF THESE LITTLE ONES, YOU HAVE
DONE IT FOR ME."

September 6 is of course LABOR DAY Sunday, and there could be no more
fitting time to address this important issue in behalf of America's
laboring classes. Nor does it hurt that this Sunday will coincide
with the return of America's lawmakers to Washington and the
resumption of discussions about the whole health care issue. YOU
MIGHT EVEN WANT TO SEND YOUR OWN SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES COPIES
OF YOUR SERMON, and demand that they stop politicizing a humanitarian
issue and get back to doing what they are paid so well to do, namely,
represent the PEOPLE of their states and districts.

FOR THOSE WHO PREACH FROM THE LECTIONARY, the Gospel reading for this
September 6, Mark 7:24-37, offers one of the finest texts in the Bible
for a HEALTH CARE SERMON. It is the story of Jesus' healing of the
Syrophoenician woman's little daughter after she begs him for help.

At first, Jesus refused to help, saying he could not give what he had
to offer to "the dogs"––a first century slam against Gentiles. But
the woman, who had risked so much by approaching a strange man in
public, wasn't about to stop with that. Yes, she said, but even the
"little dogs" (Greek "kunariois" for the pedants among you) get to eat
the crumbs that fall from the children's table.

Yielding to her importunity, Jesus healed her daughter and this
occasion became THE HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT POINT IN MARK'S GOSPEL when
Jesus stopped taking his message to the Jews alone and BEGAN TO GO TO
THE GENTILES. Note the feeding of the 5000 before this text, which
was on Jewish soil and for Jews, and the feeding of the 4000 that
follows it, which is on Gentile soil and for Greeks or Gentiles.

In other words, THIS TEXT CORRESPONDS WITH JESUS' TAKING HIS OWN
HEALTH CARE FROM THOSE WHO HAD BEEN GETTING IT AND EXTENDING IT TO
THOSE WHO HADN'T BEEN RECEIVING IT.

What text could be more appropriate? This could well be the finest
hour this text has ever known, when thousands of ministers take it up
to talk about national health care in America!

It might also be the finest hour in a long time for America's clergy,
who have been dawdling along in disuse and marginality for a very long
time. We could very well help to turn the tide on this one, people.
God might use the insignificant to do something significant!

Pray about it. Step up to the plate. And DO THIS FOR JESUS!=