Too many of us are too comfortable with the warm feeling we get when we write a check to a non-profit organization or ladle out a bowl on a soup line. White Christians may be more likely to support charitable programs than our secular counterparts, but they are also less likely to support government programs that alleviate poverty. The two attitudes are interrelated, writes Rev. Arthur Simon, founder of Bread for the World.
“If you look at my life’s work, all that I am is because I am a Catholic," says health care journalist and activist Colleen Shaddox. "If you hate that I’m a socialist and that I want everyone to have their basic needs met, then you need to hate that I’m a Catholic, too. Because they are of a piece.”
Amy Hale, MD is an active member of First Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Indiana, and a primary care physician at VIMCare Clinic, formerly known as Volunteers in Medicine, where she cares for patients without a primary care physician who are uninsured or have Medicaid coverage. "Healthcare is a human right and should be accessible to all," she says. "Lack of ability to pay should not be the single determining factor in a person's ability to attain good health."
No charity program is a substitute for reliable healthcare, a social-safety net, or a job with a living wage. But many Americans assume that there must be a “program out there,” a charity that will come to the rescue of whoever needs rescuing. It turns out this is a peculiarly American illusion. Most other rich countries devote far more government funding to programs that meet social needs; they do not expect charity to replace state assistance.
After more than three decades of hands-on experience in healthcare, most of it while serving as a Sister of Providence, Sister Barbara Battista can attest to the deep connection between faith traditions and caring for the needs of those who struggle. "People of faith are called to ensure we have a healthcare system that is built on a foundation of justice.”
Faith in Healthcare is grateful to the terrific social movement weekly publication Waging Nonviolence for publishing this article by our editor. We offer it here to Faith in Healthcare readers in two parts. You can read last week’s Part One here, and here is Part Two.
Faith in Healthcare is grateful to the terrific social movement weekly publication Waging Nonviolence for publishing this article by our editor. We offer it here to Faith in Healthcare readers in two parts. This week, Part One.
Januarie York makes it clear she is a poet, not a social worker. And she rejects the label of community activist. But she feels an obligation to act, an obligation she says should be shared by the entire community. “We all need to care. Black men are humans, they are part of our society, and they are expected to keep their heads up and moving forward. But they are suffering.” She pauses, then repeats, with emphasis: “They are suffering.”
Sofia Adawy, M.D., is the Health Clinic director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), a community organization that fosters health, wellness and healing in the inner-city, including through the comprehensive health center that Dr. Adawy directs on Chicago’s South Side. We are grateful for her making the time to be the latest faith-motivated healthcare advocate and provider to participate in our Faith in Healthcare Five-Question Interview.
We all know the scenario. The one relative we never see except for holiday family gatherings is holding forth, blasting on high volume political opinions delivered straight from Fox News.
Let’s say it’s Uncle Joe at Thanksgiving dinner. He turns to you and says, “Please tell me you are not supporting that socialist Medicare for All garbage that is going to bankrupt us all, and make me wait three years for heart surgery!”
How do you respond?
The silver lining in our currently dismal healthcare system is that we have a lot of models to learn from, where other nations have done far better for far less. The common denominator among those nations is that they refuse to allow corporations to make billions and executives to make tens of millions off of relentless price-gouging of sick people. Yet those nations do follow different paths on their way to more just, affordable outcomes. Reviewing a few of the options is a useful exercise for the U.S. as we contemplate change, in part because it exposes the lie that we can’t afford to do better.
“From preachers to lawmakers to people struggling to get healthcare, multiple groups and people from all across different communities were speaking up, saying this was going to hurt thousands,” says Rev. David W. Greene, Sr. “When you get that kind of coalition together, that’s when the powers-that-be pay attention.”
Last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren became the latest in a series of candidates and economists to release a plan to pay for Medicare for All. Each of those plans features increasing taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations. Here are four reasons why that is a very good thing.
The U.S. healthcare system is far and away the most expensive in the world. And there is a fast-rising demand for workers in the field. So it seems reasonable to conclude that all critical healthcare jobs pay good wages. Sue Williams-Ward knows better. So do her two million-plus fellow home care workers who endure poverty wages and exploitation on the front lines of our healthcare system. The racism and sexism behind their struggles, and what we can do about it, are the subject of this week’s Faith in Healthcare, jointly published with Sojourners.
This week’s message is written by Melinda St. Louis, who directs Public Citizen’s Medicare for All Campaign. Melinda has spent much of her activist career organizing among faith communities. As an organizer with Witness for Peace and Jubilee USA Network, she organized with congregations and people of faith and conscience around issues of peace, human rights, and economic justice. Last year, she turned her focus to the inhumane, profit-driven private health insurance system in the United States that prioritizes profit for shareholders and massive CEO salaries over people’s health. We at Faith in Healthcare are grateful for Melinda’s tireless advocacy for healthcare justice, and for sharing this opportunity for local action with all of us.
This article by our editor, co-published with the Health and Human Rights Journal, tells the story of how two ambitious Indiana politicians set out a few years ago to undercut Medicaid in their state. Now, those two Indiana politicians, then-Governor Mike Pence and his healthcare advisor Seema Verma, have ascended to the national stage. With Pence as Vice President and Verma as administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, they have vowed to make their punitive, restrictive version of Indiana Medicaid the new law of the land. But patients, activists, and attorneys from Pence’s and Verma’s home state are pushing back, in the streets and in the courts. Part two of two:
This article by our editor, co-published in the Health and Human Rights Journal, tells the story of two ambitious politicians who set out a few years ago to undercut Medicaid in their state. Then-Governor of Indiana Mike Pence and his healthcare advisor Seema Verma have now ascended to the national stage. With Pence as Vice President and Verma as administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, they have vowed to make their punitive, restrictive version of Indiana Medicaid the new law of the land, cutting millions of Americans off of care in the process. But patients, activists, and attorneys from Pence’s and Verma’s home state are pushing back, in the streets and in the courts. Part one of two:
Five-Question Interview with Sr. Simone Campbell, “Nun on the Bus” and Director of NETWORK Advocates
Sr. Simone Campbell, the original “Nun on the Bus” and the leader of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice since 2004, is a Presidentially-certified healthcare hero.
In early 2010, as the historic vote on the Affordable Care Act was looming, the legislation was in jeopardy. Many Catholic lawmakers supported the ACA but were wary of defying the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who opposed the bill on anti-abortion grounds.
Then, Campbell and NETWORK released a letter to Congress from organizations and communities representing tens of thousands of Catholic Sisters. They turned the “right to life” argument on its head: “For us, this health care reform is a faith mandate for life and dignity of all of our people,” they wrote. “We urge you to vote “yes” for life by voting yes for health care reform.”
The so-called “Nuns’ Letter” provided the cover some Catholic lawmakers needed, tipping the scales toward passage. President Obama himself thanked Campbell and invited her to the signing of the law that has led to millions of Americans getting access to healthcare.
We are thrilled that Sr. Simone Campbell is the latest faith-motivated healthcare advocate to join us for a Faith in Healthcare Five-Minute Interview.
Julie Bodnar is a policy adviser in the Office of Domestic Social Development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). She is the latest faith-motivated healthcare advocate to join us for a Five-Question Interview.
Any American who has paid the price of a patent-protected medicine knows the core flaw in the U.S. prescription drug system: our elected leaders have handed over control to profit-hungry corporations. It doesn’t have to be this way. That is the message of an exciting new report, Medicine for All: The Case for a Public Option in the Pharmaceutical Industry.