Wouldn't God want health care reform?
This past week I have had the flu, which has given me pause to really think about the need for health care reform. Fortunately I am very healthy and only suffer from the occasional flu, cold or sore throat. As I am very healthy, I don’t often think about health care except when I am sick.
As I have laid here for three days running a fever and coughing up phlegm I get depressed. When will this end? I know it will soon be over but it seems like it never will. I am acutely aware of what it is like to have a long term illness as my beloved father suffered with viral cardio myopathy from the time I was 12 years old till his death when I was 25.
Ironically my father was a doctor and a staunch Republican who was against “socialized medicine. However it would make him turn over in his grave to see the state of the health care system in this country today. He was never one to turn a patient away for their inability to pay. He was not a big fan of incompetent middle men making a huge profit from doing absolutely nothing. He was not a fan of making money just for the sake of greed. In short, if he were alive today he would be out advocating for health care reform.
Whenever I am sick, I often think of him and how he suffered for so long. He smoked for years and was under a lot of professional stress. He had compassion and cared about all of his patients. Back in the days when he practiced, preventative health—exercise, nutrition, etc was looked upon as quackery and in many ways is still regarded as such today. Let’s face it. The way the health care system is set up in this country, there is little profit to be made in people staying healthy.
My Dad’s illness and death taught me to take personal responsibility for my own health at a young age, as I could see that doctors didn’t’ have a clue. I don’t smoke, rarely drink, eat well, exercise and try to avoid stress. I was also lucky to be blessed with a lot of my mother’s strong Pennsylvania Dutch genes which never seem to age.
It’s interesting to me to look at people when they were young and how they age. In many ways we are all given equal opportunity to take care of our most precious gift, the body which is the temple for the soul. It saddens me when I see what many people I have known have done to their temples through the years, usually out of the illusion that the health care system will “take care” of that for them. I see a system that just perpetuates a myth and they become sicker and sicker through their actions and what the system feeds them in terms of information and medication.
I have a close relative who is on the other side of the health care “debate.” She can afford to be as her husband has a very high paying corporate job. All she can focus on is that she “needs more.” That “I don’t have enough.” She tries to fill that void inside of herself daily through buying food and possessions. She can of course judge other people for not being able to afford health care as money is no issue to her. Both her and her husband were very healthy, good looking young people who are now plagued with weight and all sorts of health issues due to their lifestyle and lack of any real spiritual life.
When I see these people on the news protesting about health care reform, it is ironic to me that many of them look very unhealthy. They are overweight and most importantly they are very angry. That indicates to me that they are very unhappy. I feel fortunate that the service work I have done over the years has given me compassion for others. These people at “town hall meetings” appear to have no empathy at all. They don’t even seem to know who or what they are angry about, just that they are justified in feeling angry.
At some point, I would venture to say that many of these people will need health care as they have so much vitriol inside of them it will make them ill. It sickened me to read the story of the Cigna employee that flipped off the mother of Nataline Sarkisyan , a 17 year old girl who died in 2007 after being denied a liver transplant by Cigna in 2007. Other Cigna employees apparently also heckled the protesters at their Philadelphia headquarters. My question for them, as for all of those people who have exhibited such outrageous behavior during this whole health care “debate” is where is your humanity? Is this what Jesus would do? To have blind allegiance to a cause (making insurance companies rich) that strips away your basic humanity is in essence the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany.
Doesn’t’ it make more sense to take all of that energy and use it in a positive way? Like finding ways to make the environment cleaner & more pleasant for all. Maybe instead of protesting to go volunteer at a battered women’s shelter or a hospice? Maybe try being a “Samaritan” instead of a “Christian.”
I’ve always been taught to believe that “all men (and women)” were created equal. Therefore wouldn’t God want health care for all?
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Wouldn't God want health care reform?
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