Health care – napkins and all

Common Craft shared a link to this great explanation of the current health care situation ::

I’m currently insured and my employer pays all my monthly premiums. That’s great if you ask me – but my insurance also isn’t the best of the best. Laurie had to pass on a job with our district because our insurance is simply no good — unless you don’t mind limited options and seeing your Primary Care Physician every time you need to see a specialist (which are at least 75% of Laurie’s doctors visits).

And even though my insurance isn’t the best – its still better than nothing – which is where far too many Americans (and people around the world) are.

There are so many issues at hand here that we could sit and argue till we’re blue in the face and still not accomplish a thing.

Calling one another socialist (as if that’s a four letter word) doesn’t move the conversation anywhere. Calling those who don’t want a government option uncaring doesn’t help either.

As the slideshow points out, reform needs to come from both sides of health care – the provider side and the payer side. And either way – Americans are likely going to end up paying more.

But imagine if it could be different. Imagine if we really did take “love your neighbor as yourself” seriously and responded when our neighbors needed help. Imagine if we took part in an economy of enough and shared our overflow when our neighbors were hurting. What if we believed, as Dorothy Day says, “If you have two coats, one belongs to the poor.” Would the insurance issue go away?

I guess we can only imagine…

But what if we stopped believing health care for all was really some pie in the sky dream. What if we actively joined with God and brought heaven to earth? What would that look like?

To spur your imagination (and hopefully action) Sojourners has put together a great Guide to The Health Care Reform Debate. You may or may not agree with it. That’s fine. But at least take a couple minutes to read over it and chew on it. Perhaps it will bring out something you haven’t considered before.

Here’s the intro..

According to the Institute of Medicine, 18,000 people in our nation still die each year unnecessarily because they lack affordable health coverage.

Scripture does not outline specific public policies around the provision of health care, but it does depict that protecting the health of each person is an important personal and communal responsibility for people of faith.

• Good health is God’s will for every person created in the divine image.
• In both the Old and New Testament, the word salvation includes physical wholeness.
• The entire Bible is an ongoing progression toward God’s new world where God will “wipe away every tear from their eye… Mourning and crying and pain will be no more“ (Rev. 21:4) and “No more shall there
  be… an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime (Isaiah 65:20).”
• Jesus and his disciples demonstrate that sharing the good news and healing the sick are bound up together (Luke 9:6, Mark 7:32-35).
• Physical healing was a part of the salvation Jesus brought, as illustrated by the use of the word saved (sovo) throughout the Gospels to refer to physical healing. Healings represent a sign of the in breaking of God’s kingdom into the present reality.

As Christians, we are called to participate in God’s new creation as instruments of healing and redemption. By assuring that every family has access to health care, we affirm the dignity of each human, enabling people to regain their health, and enjoy the dignity of productive work.

read the rest…

(photo from h-k-d)