Cynicism and Hope

“It was enough for him to know that the people were pre-existing.”

–Ed Spivey of Sojourners, in What Would Jesus Prescribe?

Having just returned to freelancing and been smacked in the face by the difficulty of accessing health insurance when you’re self-employed, I’ve been disheartened that the abortion debate threatens to derail health-care reform.

But if we calmly unpack the Stupak amendment, maybe we can all find a way to get along. NPR’s All Things Considered offers some help.

Heidi Unruh suggests two things to pay attention to when discussing public policy: principles that make sense to everyone, even small children, and questions no one can answer.

Then she links to this video, produced by the American Values Network and Sojourners:

Are you waiting to see the doctor? Tell us about it in the comments.

My friend E. Peevie’s eleven-year-old son

has so many pre-existing conditions, long-term medications, and high-risk medical concerns that the only way he’ll get health care coverage is if he marries a cardiologist or ends up working for a large company that’s required to provide health insurance to all of its employees.

Read about him and hospitals here.

I was talking with someone about media bias and health care. I asked, “What do you know about Canadian health care?”

“Well, I haven’t researched it,” he said, “but I’ve heard it’s really bad.”

“Who has told you it’s bad? Are they people who have researched it themselves?”

“I don’t know what kind of research people do, but you hear it from commentators in the media and people like that.”

“Do you know what Canadians think about it?”

“Well they wouldn’t really know.”

“Huh?”

“They only know their own system. They haven’t experienced ours, so they don’t have anything to compare their system to.”

I’m not sure who can be experts on Canadian health care if Canadians themselves are out of the running, but for what it’s worth, here’s what a few Canadians think:

I’m doing my homework!

Yep, I’m back in school. When I visited the beautiful University of Notre Dame bookstore with my mom during a recent weekend getaway, I was drawn to the section with stacks of books for classes. I lovingly gazed at the titles then sadly left the forbidden fruit behind. There was no way I could afford to go back to school.

But now I’m a graduate student in public policy at Loyola! (Just a student-at-large this term; GREs and acceptance by the department are between me and the degree track.)

The reason I can afford to go to school is ironic: I was running into potential complications with my application for health insurance on the private market, and I desperately didn’t want to delay my departure from my job and my planned return to freelancing. Then it dawned on me: if I’m a student, I can buy into the student insurance plan. I did the math:

Tuition + student insurance + $116/month = private insurance premium + monthly contribution to Health Savings Account to save toward the high deductible

So the fruit’s no longer forbidden, and I took a big bite of it tonight.

Well, actually I took a small bite and chewed on it for a very long time. Which made me realize I’m born to be a wonk. Why else would I scribble notes all over this chart of excludable versus nonexcludable and rivalrous versus nonrivalrous goods, mapping out the chaos of health care in the U.S.?

But maybe I’ll turn out to be a wonk of a different color. As interested as I am in public policy, communitarian approaches to societal challenges are just as interesting to me. So today I also contacted a member of a commune here in Chicago to learn more about their approach to health care, and I salivated when she suggested I attend upcoming meetings of the Communal Studies Association.

Also this week I sparred with some really conservative Facebook friends who want teeny tiny government because, they say, it’s the church’s job to care for people. Trouble is, of course, the church isn’t doing its job very well, and that’s not the government’s fault. Attending to the common good is not an either-or proposition to me. The common good requires action by both government and civil society—and by that very peculiar form of civil society that is the community of believers.

There’s no telling where my new education and freelance freedom will take me, but I believe there are clues in this story.

While I continue to work full-time at the job-with-benefits that I’m about to leave, I’m trying to fast-track a transition to other insurance for my family. It’s been exhausting and has left me extra grouchy about the health-care debate.

So you can imagine my irritation when I came across this gem:

The Family Research Council needed to use elderly people in this ad because denial of coverage is already a common experience for people too young for Medicare. To scare people about government denial of coverage they had to use people who already have the most reliable coverage, which just so happens to be provided by the government.

Oppose government health care because it will spell the end of government health care!

Huh?

Oh, was I feeling grouchy!

But then I read about the Mennonite Church USA’s Corinthian Plan. A couple of years ago, delegates at a church convention decided to formally support health-care reform. But they realized that if they’re going to say health care is a justice issue, they need to practice what they preach, and about 100 Mennonite pastors in this country have no health insurance.

So they came up with a plan. If 80% or more of U.S. Mennonite congregations will chuck $10 per attender into a pot, all Mennonite pastors and church workers will be able to have health coverage for their families regardless of the size or wealth of their congregations. The plan is more complicated, but that’s it in a nutshell.

This concrete expression of Mennonite mutual aid takes its name from 2 Corinthians 8:13-15:

I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

This story of mutual aid calmed my soul.

It’s important to note that the Mennonite Church USA’s support for health-care reform continues. They know that a just civil society will also reflect the Corinthian principle.

This sentence concludes Rick Perlstein’s interesting take on the vehemence of opposition to health care reform:

Good thing our leaders weren’t so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill—because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.

See In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition, from the August 16 Washington Post.

Hat tip to Rick Nowlin.

When I read Rose Marie Berger’s blog post Who Lit the Fire Under the Right-Wing ‘Populists’ Against Healthcare Reform? I had a flashback to the discomfort that made me stop reading the book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, some years ago.

Strange Justice infuriated me, but not because of the sexual harassment alleged by Anita Hill. That was bad, but I kept reading through that part. I became angry enough to put the book down when I read that leaders of a Christian organization were busing people in from out of town to attend rallies in support of Thomas—specifically to create the illusion that there was local support for his nomination. I believe the organizer behind these events was Ralph Reed. (If someone has a copy of the book, I’d be glad if they could check me on these details.)

If a cause is right, truth should be the means of persuasion.