After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’ But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, “Take up your mat and walk.” ’ They asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, “Take it up and walk”?’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. ~ John 5:1-13 (NRSV)
The great challenge of our time is to finally establish universal health care in the United States. While most of the nation was seized this weekend by the outpouring of warm sentiment and high praises during the memorial services for the late, great Senator Ted Kennedy, we attended the funeral of a young child who died entirely too soon. As the so-called “lion of the American senate” was being laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery with the tribute and fanfare typically reserved for heroes and heads of state (of which he can be counted amongst in his finest hours), it was sitting in a church pew listening to the eulogies and testimonies of how a sickly child who was now deceased had made such a profound impact on an entire community. Dying just a week before turning 13 years old, Angel (this is a pseudonym to respect the privacy of the family) was the most cherished heart of a large family that was both loving and hard-working. Although Angel suffered from debilitating chronic illnesses from birth that made it impossible for the child to speak and suffer countless developmental delays, both Angel’s biological family as well as church family saw the child as a rare and precious jewel. Although Angel’s family could never imagine the inconceivable level of fame, fortune, and celebrity enjoyed by the Kennedys, they met the challenge of meeting Angel’s special needs with all the love and care that they could possibly muster knowing that would make all the difference in the life of this beloved child. But, contrary to all the wildly outlandish allegations by the likes of former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin and other conservatives, Angel’s young, pain-filled life was neither compromised nor cut short by some make-believe “death panel” but rather by an ineffective health care system that refuses to attend to the needs of the least of these.
Too much of the recent health care debate—or should we say “debacle” because that is what it truly seems to be—has been dictated by politicos, pundits, and public relations gurus who have gone so far into the absurd realm of gun-toting protesters as town hall meetings and “Obama-as-Hitler” tirades that they have lost sight of the sick and dying people in our country. With the best estimate, there are roughly 46 million American men, women, and children without any health care coverage in a national population of 300 million. Simply put, nearly 1 out of 6 people in our society has no reliable or consistent access to health care and therefore are in jeopardy of some catastrophic health crises that will devastate not only them but also the entire fabric of our society. Moreover, this number has leapt by 10 million since the early 1990s when the Clinton administration’s attempt to enact health care reform was stalled due to the mounting scare tactics used by the health care industry and their conservative Republican mouthpieces. In the span of more than a decade, all leading indicators on the health and wellness index suggest that Americans are getting sicker rather than healthier as a people. How many more millions have to fall by the wayside before it becomes apparent that health care is a right of the multitude and not a luxury for the privileged few?
The widening gap in health care particularly along lines of race and class is quite literally a matter of life and death. In his book, Where Do We Go From Here? (1967), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. states, “Depressed living standards are not simply the consequence of neglect… They are a structural part of the economic system in the United States.” The reality that United States spends more on health care than any other country, and still lags behind virtually every other industrialized nation in providing health insurance coverage, limiting infant mortality and increasing life expectancy for all its citizens is not merely a disgrace but it is also virtually a death sentence. Despite all the social and political progress that has been made since the civil rights era, this fact is especially true for African Americans who are consistently subjected to subpar access to medical care in our society. When one looks at recent health statistics for African Americans, the estimates are absolutely appalling. Even today, with all of our medical advances, Black infants are still nearly twice as likely that their white counterparts to die before reaching their first birthday. Nearly half of African Americans do not visit a dentist on a regular basis—a vital means of personal health maintenance—for lack of a dental health plan. Furthermore, the rates of long-term, life-threatening ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, and various forms of cancer for African Americans are among the highest in the nation. African American women remain most likely to contract and potentially die from HIV / AIDS –related illnesses than any other demographic group in our society. Finally, at least one in five African Americans have no health insurance at all, a statistic that is bound to skyrocket given the current rise in unemployment. Since health care benefits have been linked to a person’s employment status in our society, this sets up a deadly equation for Black people: since we are most often “the last hired and first fired,” the underlying message here is anyone who is unfit to work is also unfit to live. This ought not be the case in the American society that has promised all its citizens “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as the benchmark of human fulfillment.
Most recently, President Barack Obama has stepped into the political fray in order to try and provide greater clarity to the situation. In a New York Times op-ed column, Mr. Obama outlined the main goals of his administration’s intended health care reform plan, namely providing health insurance coverage for all currently uninsured people, lowering health care costs, ensuring the longevity of Medicare and Medicaid for future recipients, and making the entire health care industry—especially health insurance companies—more accountable to those people who are in the greatest need of its services. But, in the face of all the confusion and uproarious behavior surrounding possible health care reform in the United States, the most persuasive point Mr. Obama offers regarding this debate is when he says that “the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain. But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people.” When the health care industry cannot see its way clear to doing the right thing to guarantee that every man, woman, and child can have a decent quality of life, the government can and should step into the gap in order to save the lives of the many millions of uninsured folks if this debates continues for another decade.
When thinking about the biblical story of the paralyzed man waiting by the healing pool for his healing to come, the narrative has so much relevance to the world in which we currently live. According to the gospel writer, the man had been so close to the possible cure to his body’s ailment yet remained so far away that it taunted him for nearly forty years. As he lay on the ground, unable to carry him to the healing pool or convince others to draw him closer to its life-renewing waters, it is interesting to note that SOMEONE must have been sustaining the man in a veritable form of life support for all those years. What sort of “stinking thinking” would make it possible for a society to keep its sickest, most deprived members alive in the depths of their pain and suffering but not empower them to receive desperately needed healing that is well within reach. Even as Jesus walks into the paralyzed man’s life as the miraculous manifestation of answered prayers, the man was so engrossed by his history of deep hurt and denied healing that he could not respond to the simple question “‘Do you want to be made well?” For those of us committed who seek to live according to good faith and conscience, we ought to work unceasingly to bring forth a comprehensive system of national health care that will address the health needs of millions of people. Let the healing begin now.
Something You Should Check Out…
Given the increasingly wretched state of contemporary U.S. health care as well as the desperation it breeds in so many people, it is impossible to walk away from the film John Q. without thinking about the timeliness of its edgy material. Academy Award winner Denzel Washington plays John Quincy Archibald, a struggling blue-collar factory worker whose job is tenuous and his family’s house is on the verge of being repossessed and his lovely, hardworking wife (played by Kimberly Elise) is completely stressed out. When their young son unexpectedly collapses while rounding the bases in a Little League baseball game, the diagnosis reveals that the child is in urgent need of a heart transplant. To make matters even worse, when he learns that the heart transplant his son needs won't be performed because his health care doesn't cover it. Pushed to his wits' end by the desperate situation that threatens to destroy his family, John Q. takes the takes an entire downtown Chicago emergency room hostage including the surgeon, staff, and numerous patients. As the police and hospital officials try to negotiate with him, his threat is that he will kill the captives unless his son receives a new heart. While not interested in ruining the movie for anyone who has not seen it, the most agonizing moment in the film occurs when Denzel Washington utters the line “I will not bury my son, my son is going to bury me!" Although this film oversimplifies or overlooks many of the complexities of the current health care crisis, the film John Q is an effective tearjerker set for viewers who are fed up with the health-care system. As an added feature, there are a number of added short documentary films that discuss various aspects of our nation's broken health care system.
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