October 2009 – Rector’s Ruminations
From our founding, we as a nation have espoused the notion that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are inalienable rights. Today at least 45 million people in our country are without the most basic human right, life, which assumes a modicum of health. Health and health care is an individual and social responsibility. Moreover for Christians it is a moral responsibility. As such it is the prophetic task of the Church to call government, the health care profession and individuals to a reformation that will support the sacred gift of life.
The Church’s ministry of healing, following the example of Jesus, intends health and wholeness for all of creation. As human beings created in the image and likeness of God, it is our common vocation, under God’s command to have dominion, to be stewards and co-caregivers of the earth and all its creatures.
Hypocrisy is the only word to describe how we as a nation have criticized other nations for “human rights violations” while denying the basic human right of health care to almost 20 percent of our population. It is an economic and moral outrage that we spend more money than any other nation on health care and are one of the most unhealthy nations given the ongoing rise of obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Who bears the responsibility for the reform of health care in our nation? Government, the health care professions, insurance companies and individuals all share the responsibility. It is ironic that we elected a President with the clear expectation that he would reform health care and now are embroiled in partisan politics that threaten the needed reform that we mandated our President to deliver. Lies and fantasies about health care reform coupled with lies about our President have escalated to the point of being despicable, e.g. “Obama is plotting to set up ‘death panels: government tribunals authorized to euthanize the old and the sick,’” or “Obama was born in Kenya and therefore his very presidency is unconstitutional,” or “Obama will cut Medicare benefits to provide coverage to illegal aliens,” or “Obama seeks to indoctrinate children in Marxist ideology and put teenagers in reeducation camps,” or “Obama is a Communist,” or “Obama is a Fascist.” Lies – given a patina of legitimacy by a conservative media alliance built around talk radio and cable television, especially Fox News. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage not reporting news but creating news through influence by way of lies, smears and hateful sound bites supported unfortunately by nominally respectable corporations and funded by national advertisers.
Health care reform as a human right and moral imperative transcends partisan politics. The character of a nation will be judged on how it cares for those who are sick and in need of healing, especially “the least of these…”
Greed, litigation, skyrocketing health care premiums and the self-interest of health care as a business are in need of reform and government regulation. Without it the current situation will only worsen.
There is also another industry often unidentified that is a primary contributor to disease in our country: the food industry. In a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times (September 10), Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, states that “The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care.” According to Pollan, we are spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. “One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care.”
Pollan notes that the food system reform has not figured in the national conversation about health care reform. A related irony, health care insurers who you would think would be interested and want to promote prevention of chronic diseases find it to be better business and more profitable to keep patients at risk for chronic disease and toss patients overboard when they become ill.
Pollan concludes by noting that passing a health care reform bill, no matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our actual health – which means going to work on “The American way of eating.”
All of which brings me to my final point – we as individuals bear the responsibility for health care reform. What we eat, how we eat, daily exercise, ample rest cannot be mandated by the government, insurance companies or the health care profession. The responsibility for such reform is ours and requires a personal and community resolve to develop healthy habits in our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.
A concluding theological postscript: health care reform, although it has not been directly related to the Genesis Covenant, should be in that it is an essential ingredient in caring for our environment of which we as human beings are a part. Health, wholeness and holiness are related and point to the sanctity of all life.
Take care of your health that it may serve you to serve God,
Bishop Craig Anderson, Rector, Emmanuel Episcopal Parish