It's Thursday and I'm still trying to process the meaning of Tuesday's election in Massachusetts and its ramifications for health care reform. As I write the words healthcare and election in the same sentence, I'm saddened that a human rights issue remains a political one. The US cannot be the best nation in the world when it justifies as morally acceptable 44 million people without access to health insurance or paid healthcare.
Tonight my husband and I ate dinner in a local restaurant and there by the cash register, attached to a jar as big as a basketball, was the picture of a toddler in need of a kidney transplant. Please give for my surgery implored the text. There was just a few dollars in the bottom. I guess the jar is so big because the need is so great. Welcome to healthcare funding for the poor in America.
For those of you who wonder if it's a scam, you'd be wrong most of the time. When I worked as a chaplain in pediatric oncology at a charity hospital, parents routinely held car washes and sold bbq plates in the hope of raising funds for bone marrow transplants, blood transfusions, or chemotherapy. For those whose children died, I watched the same parents hold the same style fundraisers to pay for funeral costs.
If we don't provide affordable healthcare for all, then as a nation we have proclaimed our highest value: profits above people.
No comments:
Post a Comment