BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

OK…you’ve been warned, so proceed at your own risk. T.R. Reid begins his new book, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, with these words:
If we want to fix American health care, we first have to answer a basic question: Should we guarantee medical treatment to everyone who needs it?

That is, indeed, the first question which must be answered, although today’s debate seems to focus solely on the economics of the question. Is health care a basic human right, like the right to think and pray freely, get an education, or vote? Or is it just another commodity, something to be bought and sold, like a computer or an i-Phone?

Reid contends that thus far, we have treated healthcare as a commodity…one which we don’t want to be forced to buy for those who can’t afford it, anymore than we’d buy them a refrigerator or a big screen tv. But, he says, if we believed that adequate health care is a basic human right without regard to ability to pay, then we could construct a system to provide it without lowering quality and raising costs. He is sure about this for one reason: every other wealthy democracy is the world has already done it. “Countries that are just as comitted as we are to equal opportunity, individual liberty, and the free market have concluded that everybody has a right to health care, and they provide it.”

President Obama made a statement with which I disagree when he spoke to Congress on the subject. He said that our “American character” should move us to make health care available to all (large-heartedness, concern and regard for the plight of others, our ability to stand in other people’s shoes). I disagree, because in view of our claim to be a “Christian” nation, our motivation should be our determination to follow Jesus and his dictum to “be compassionate, as God is compassionate,” rather than our Americanism.

It’s disturbing to me that the most vocal forms of Christianity among us seem to be the least in favor of health care for everyone. Anyone else see that as a contradiction?

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday