This week, as the most comprehensive and detailed version of Medicare for All legislation is being unveiled in the U.S. Congress, Faith in Healthcare conducted an informal survey of major U.S. faith groups. We break down which have explicitly endorsed a single-payer, Medicare for All system for the U.S., and which have made a less specific call for universal healthcare.
A frightening diagnosis with breast cancer in 2007 led Lisa Hayes to leave behind her legal career and devote herself to serving others facing health crises. Hayes is the director of women’s health services at Gennesaret Free Clinics in Indianapolis and executive director of the R.E.D. (Reaching to End Disparities) Alliance, which works to reduce breast cancer late-stage diagnosis and death rates for African American women.
Hayes is the latest in a series of faith-based healthcare advocates and providers participating in our Faith in Healthcare "Five Questions" interview.
Plans to fix our prescription drug pricing crisis can be confusing. The confusion is caused in part by obscure issues of patent law and government regulation, and in part by pharmaceutical corporations intentionally keeping their costs and pricing processes secretive. So Faith in Healthcare's editor, who has written extensively on drug pricing reforms, cuts through the fog to provide you with this quick ranking of the major proposals to lower drug prices.
Remember when the Affordable Care Act was under attack in Congress? Nathan Bennett of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism helped coordinate the passionate interfaith defense of the program that provides and protects healthcare for millions.
The Trump plans to impose work requirements on Americans who count on Medicaid for their healthcare are based on a foundation of lies, and will cause suffering and even death--unless we can stop them.
Mehreen Karim is an educator with HEART Women and Girls, which promotes sexual health and sexual violence awareness in Muslim communities. She is the former Digital Communications Specialist for NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, and is obtaining her Masters in Public Health at New York University.
Note: A version of this article, also written by our editor, is published online by our friends at Sojourners. To see that version of the article, click here.
Dr. Will Cooke practices medicine in Austin, Indiana, a town of just 4,200 people located in a rural community about 40 miles north of Louisville. The opioid addiction crisis hit the community hard, followed by worst outbreak of HIV ever chronicled in rural America.
A physician whose Christian faith leads him to care and advocate for his rural Indiana patients struggling with addiction and infectious disease. A Capitol Hill lobbyist whose Jewish faith leads him to fight in the halls of Congress to defend healthcare programs. A physician whose Muslim faith fuels her devotion to her low-income patients on the South side of Chicago.
All of these inspiring people, and thousands of others like them, are living testaments to the fact that all major religious traditions embrace a core responsibility to care for the sick. From creating history’s first-ever charity hospitals to presenting a unified front to defend programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the faith community has consistently acted on that mandate.
People of Faith for Access to Medicines was proud to partner with our close ally T1International to coordinate history’s largest demonstration protesting the skyrocketing costs of insulin. Over 80 persons affected by diabetes raised their voices on September 30th outside of insulin manufacturer Eli Lilly and Company headquarters. For a video account of the demonstration, go here. And for one of the several news accounts of the moving and powerful action, go here.
History shows that the successful social movements are the ones led by people directly impacted by injustice. (Civil rights, labor, women’s rights, anti-apartheid, etc.) Patients like Elizabeth Pfiester and her colleagues at T1International and the #insulin4all movement will be the ones to lead us to healthcare for all. Thanks to Truthout for publishing an article by PFAM's coordinator profiling Elizabeth and T1I.
All faith traditions have a mandate to ensure healthcare for our sisters and brothers in need, and an admirable legacy of providing that care directly. But they don't and can't reach everyone. So it is time for those communities to raise our voices in support of a proven system that guarantees care for all. Thanks to the National Catholic Reporter for publishing this article by PFAM's coordinator.
PFAM's Fran Quigley appeared on the public radio station WFYI's show No Limits , produced in partnership with Side Effects Public Media, to talk about our prescription drug pricing crisis. Other guests were Elizabeth Pfiester of PFAM ally and patient-led advocate T1International and Bob Herman of Axios Health media. Pfiester closed the discussion with an inspiring call to action for all with health challenges: “First, make sure your needs are taken care of. Then, if you have the time and energy, join us to advocate for changing this broken system.”
PFAM is grateful for our partnership with NETWORK Lobby. NETWORK is known for the wonderful “Nuns on the Bus” advocacy tours, but the team led by Catholic sisters fight for social justice every day, all year. Thank you to NETWORK for publishing this blog post about how the faith community can help lead the way toward affordable medicines for all. Click on the title to read more!
Governor Eric Holcomb plans to impose a new work requirement on the 400,000 people in Indiana who rely on the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) for their medicines and healthcare. The work requirement will go into effect in 2019. The Trump administration has given its seal of approval to the plan, and it is up to us to stop it in Indiana!
So far, enormous grassroots frustration with the price of prescription drugs has translated into sound bite rhetoric from leading politicians, but no meaningful reform.
No one stands in a better position to connect that agitation to real change than the patients for whom drug pricing is a matter of life or death.
This feature-length article tells the stories of two cancer patients—one in the U.S. and one in South Africa—to illustrate the possibilities for patients to seize leading roles in the movement to make medicines affordable to all, and the very real challenges these patients and their movement face.
In an important new collective statement, top leadership from multiple major faith denominations have strongly reaffirmed their traditions’ recognition of the human right to health, and insisted that trade agreements--including a renegotiated NAFTA--should not include terms that extend medicine monopolies.
PFAM coordinator Fran Quigley published an article in The New Republic, "Building a NASA for Prescription Drugs," about a patent-free, low-cost alternative for robust research and affordable medicine prices.
Nicole Smith-Holt’s son Alec died in Minnesota last June--after being forced to ration Eli Lilly’s Humalog insulin when Alec, a person with type 1 diabetes, could not afford the radically-increased price of the medicine. Ms. Smith-Holt wrote about Alec’s experiences in this February article. PFAM supported Ms. Smith-Holt as she attended the Eli Lilly shareholder meeting on May 7th...
People of Faith for Access to Medicines – represented here by Sana Rizvi – is enjoying the opportunity to interact with hundreds of faith-motivated justice seekers at this year's Ecumenical Advocacy Days in the Washington DC area.