Big Think

Three Moral Issues of Health Care

Good health is the will of God for each and every one of his children. Death, disease, and pain did not exist in the Garden, and Revelation tells of a "new heaven and new earth," where once again they will not exist. We live in a fallen world where injury and sickness are a fact of life. In fact International Classification of Disease now identifies 68,000 distinct diagnoses. Every year in our country there are about 119 million ER visits, up to 902 million doctor's office visits, and about 3.5 billion prescriptions filled. Perfect health will never be achieved and physical death on this earth will never be overcome, but the scriptures paint a clear picture that this was God's intent from the beginning and will be the goal once again in the end. This means that on a personal, national, and global level the physical well-being of all God's children is close to God's heart and should be close to ours as well. There is not a religious mandate or God-ordained system of health care or insurance. No amount of biblical exegesis or study will lead you to a policy conclusion on health care savings accounts, personal versus employer provided insurance, single payer public systems, or private insurance plans. Luke might have been a physician, but he still never commented on whether or not computerizing medical records should be a national priority. These policy questions are still of vital importance and will be debated and discussed in the coming months at the White House, in Congress, in the press, and I hope in our churches. With an issue like health, deeply personal but of great public concern, I believe that the faith community has a unique and important role to play. That is, to define and raise the moral issues that lay just beneath the policy debate. There will be a lot of heat, maybe even a few fires, over the weeds of the policy, and the faith community has the opportunity to remind our political and national leaders about why these issues are so important -- why they speak to our values. There are, I believe, three fundamental moral issues that the faith community can focus on and call our political leaders back to, lest they forget. They are: the truth, full access, and cost. The Truth For decades now, the physical health and well-being of our country has been a proxy battle for partisan politics. When Truman tried to pass a national health insurance plan, the American Medical Association spent $200 million (in today's dollars) and was accused of violating ethics rules by having doctors lobby their patients to oppose the legislation. In the 1970's when Nixon tried to pass a national health insurance plan, strikingly similar to what many democrats are proposing today, the plan was defeated by liberal democrats and unions who thought that they would be able to pass something themselves after the mid-term elections and claim political credit for the plan. In the 1990's the "Harry and Louise" ads misrepresented the Clinton health care plan but was successful enough PR to shut down that movement for reform. Already, industry interests and partisan fighting are threatening the opportunity for a public dialogue about what is best for our health care system. As a resource for congregations, small groups, and individuals, Sojourners has worked with its partners to publish a Health Care tool kit [click here to download] to help frame and guide this necessary debate. This guide gives an overview of the biblical foundations of this issue and frequently asked questions about it. What we need is an honest and fair debate with good information, not sabotage of reform with half-truths and misinformation. Full Access The second fundamental value question is that of quality and affordable full access to health care. About 46 million people in our country today are uninsured and many more find themselves without adequate coverage for their medical needs. Many of them are working families who live in fear of getting sick or injured. Some delay seeking medical attention at the risk of their own health and increasing cost later on, or use emergency room services instead of primary care physicians. An estimated 18,000 people a year die unnecessarily, many from low-income families, because they lack basic health insurance. As a father, I know how important the health, wholeness, and well-being of my family is to me and is to every parent. Seeing your child sick is a horrible feeling; seeing your child sick and not having the resources to do something about it is a societal sin. Cost The third issue is cost. An estimated 60 percent of bankruptcies this year will be due to medical bills. Seventy-five percentof those declaring bankruptcy as a result of medical bills have health insurance. The costs of medical care stem from varied sources. Some of these costs come from malpractice lawsuits, some from insurance companies with high overhead and entire divisions of employees hired to find ways to deny benefits. Someone who thought they were insured could find out that their benefits were terminated retroactively because the insurer decided that there was a pre-existing condition. In the end, some are paying too much for care and others are making too much from these present arrangements. There is a lot of money, to say the least, wrapped up in health care. The faith community needs lift up the concerns of those who have no lobbyists on Capitol Hill or PR firms with slick advertising campaigns. These are pressing issues for our country, lives are at stake, and it is a debate we must have and take seriously. For the month of July, we will be taking this discussion to our blog and having some of our regular writers and guests give their opinions and perspectives. There are a myriad of special interests groups who will be promoting their own self-interests during this process. The faith community has the opportunity to step in and speak for the interests of the common good and those who would not otherwise have a voice. I am sure that every one of the 18,000 preventable deaths that will happen this year from a lack of basic health insurance breaks the heart of God. And, it should break ours too, because healing is at the very heart of the Christian vocation. Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Click here to get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis

July 2, 2009, 3:45 PM

A Call to Serve and Preserve Creation

I just returned to the United States from a clergy conference I was invited to address by Rev. James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool. As a leader in the Church of England, he has also become a global leader in the Christian responsibility to "serve and preserve" the earth. In a recent lecture he said: Just as we look back on previous times with incredulity and wonder how people, especially believers, could have not only condoned but succored the slave trade and slavery, so in later years I think subsequent generations, who will live consciously with the reality that the earth is not a limitless larder, will find it difficult to understand how we could have described ourselves so uncritically as: "consumers." A convert to this belief himself, Bishop Jones, without equivocation, calls for conversion of our hearts, our places of worship, and our public policy. This Friday, HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, is scheduled to go to the House of Representatives for a vote. As we seek to "serve and preserve" the earth on personal and communal levels, this legislation represents a great step forward for our entire country to do the same. This bill will create incentives for our largest polluting industries to reduce harmful emissions; has the opportunity to create up to 1.7 million new "green" jobs; and has protections for some of the world's poorest people to help them adapt to the ongoing consequences of climate change. The costs of inaction are already being felt across the globe, and this is the opportunity to mitigate the effects of our consumption and pollution. Leadership from the United States in this area is crucial as the world looks forward to December and the international climate treaty discussions in Copenhagen. It is clear that to love your neighbor is to love the earth, and we all need to take steps on personal and communal levels to do just that. This means setting priorities and being willing to make sacrifices in our own life, but the same needs to happen on a national and global scale. This legislation is a start and still far from perfect. But, it defines priorities for policy moving forward and demonstrates substantive changes that can provide global leadership for a challenge we must all face together. I urge you to call your representative's office today and ask him or her to vote to pass this climate change bill. You can find your rep's phone number here, or you can call the congressional switchboard at 202-225-3121 and ask to be forwarded. Make your voice heard and ensure that history does not remember us just as "consumers" of the earth and its resources, but as people who take seriously the God-given mandate to "serve and preserve" the earth. Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Click here to get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis

June 26, 2009, 1:22 PM

Justice for Vieques

For more than sixty years - from 1941 to 2003 - the U.S. Navy used the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a testing ground for its weapons. While they have refused to disclose the total amount, it is known that in the fifteen years from 1984-1998, more than 80 million pounds of explosives were dropped on the small island. The people of Vieques, accompanied by supporters from the U.S. and elsewhere, mounted a series of protests and advocacy over those years - many of them covered in Sojourners. Those efforts finally succeeded in 2003, when the Bush administration permanently ended the use of Vieques as a target range. And then, another struggle began. Due to the years of exposure to toxic metals and chemicals found in weaponry, a health crisis has exploded on Vieques. The people have a 30% higher rate of cancer, a 95% higher rate of cirrhosis of the liver, a 381% higher rate of hypertension, and a 41% higher rate of diabetes than the similar inhabitants of the main island of Puerto Rico. The infant morality rate is 25% higher for babies born on Vieques. These diseases are all indications of heavy metal poisoning, and scientific studies have traced them to the contaminants from munitions found in the land, air, and water. In response, the people of Vieques have filed a complaint against the U.S. Navy in federal district court in Puerto Rico, seeking compensatory damages. The Navy has until Monday to respond to the complaint. The question now is whether the Justice Department will allow a hearing on the merits or the complaint, or move to dismiss the claims on the ground of sovereign immunity - "the king can do no wrong." That would be a travesty of justice. The Navy should not be allowed to evade the truth about its illegal actions by hiding under the cloak of immunity. The people of Vieques - U.S. citizens - have suffered greatly at the hands of their government. Their claims for compensation deserve, at the very least, a fair hearing in court. The Justice Department must allow the case to proceed, and not seek to dismiss it by a claim of sovereign immunity. Justice demands no less. Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Click here to get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis

May 15, 2009, 2:11 PM

Love Your Neighbor, Love the Earth

The industrialized world's collective failure to both regulate pollution and curb gross overconsumption has put millions and billions of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people at increased risk of hunger, thirst, flooding, and disease. The failure of Christians to live up to the God-given mandate to "serve and preserve" the earth and be good stewards of the resources God has given us means an additional failure to live out God's mandate to care for the poor. We cannot claim to care for the poor while we turn our backs on our role in the destruction of the most basic resources our neighbors need for survival. Love for your neighbor and love for the planet on which your neighbor lives cannot be separated. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading authority on the issue, an additional 40 to 170 million poor people are at risk of hunger and malnutrition this century, and 1 to 2 billion people already in poor areas could see further reduction in their water supplies. More than 100 million people could be affected by coastal flooding. These dangers are not long off. In Africa, 75 to 250 million will face water scarcity by 2020, and crop yields could be reduced by 50 percent in some areas. All these changes could quickly produce a refugee crisis with as many as 200 million displaced persons by 2050. This reality, while depressing, comes with a sign of hope. According to a recent poll sponsored by Faith in Public Life and Oxfam America, 71 percent of Catholics and nearly two-thirds of white evangelicals believe there is solid evidence that the earth is getting warmer, and nearly eight in 10 Americans and roughly the same percentage of Christians believe that we have an obligation to care for God's creation by supporting stricter environmental laws and regulations. Nearly seven in 10 Americans and a similar number of Catholics and white evangelicals believe that climate change is making life harder for the world's poorest because of drought, famine, and crop failure, and even more of that same group -- nearly three quarters -- support helping the world's poorest people adapt to these changes. Jim Ball, my friend and founder of the Evangelical Environment Network, described to me the other day the uphill fight he used to have in churches to get Christians to pay attention to the environment. That, he says, has changed significantly over the past few years to a broad acceptance of the message of "creation care" and the direct connection that care for the planet has to care for the poor. This summer, Congress will, for the first time, vote on comprehensive climate change legislation. The American Clean Energy and Security Act is now being debated in a House committee, and much of its shape, thrust, and impact are still being discussed and decided upon. The goal of the legislation will be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through setting a cap on them and requiring businesses to hold permits to emit them. Just like you pay the city for the garbage you create by paying for sanitation services, large industries will have to pay for the garbage (greenhouse gases) they throw away into the air we all breathe. The more they throw away, the more they are charged; the less they throw away, the more they can save. If they really cut back, they can even make money by selling their extra permits to pollute to their less clean neighbors. Comprehensive climate change legislation must prioritize care for creation, not the special-interest lobbyists on both sides of the aisle who are working to pick apart this legislation. In addition, poor people, both at home and abroad, must be supported with "adaptation" resources to ensure that the cost of this legislation does not fall unduly on their shoulders. The world's poor will need resources to "adapt" -- to move away from or change living structures in at-risk coastal areas, use irrigation technologies in drought areas, or even mosquito nets for areas in which malaria will become a new or increased risk. They will also need support as certain resources -- fossil fuels or products dependent upon fossil fuels -- increase in price due to more significant regulation. Our voice is crucial in this process and input is greatly needed today. In December, the U.S. will join other countries to discuss an international climate treaty in Copenhagen. With strong leadership from our country, in both word and deed, this could be a transformational conference and result in a climate treaty with some teeth and real impact. The scriptures do not directly address the benefits of coal vs. nuclear vs. solar power, or carbon taxes vs. carbon markets, or appropriate fuel-efficiency levels for mid-size sedans. But scriptures do make clear priorities for Christians that should frame and guide this debate. With any legislation, policy, or personal behavior we should ask two questions: Does this further our God-given mandate to "serve and preserve" God's creation and acknowledge that we are not owners of the earth but the earth's caretakers? How do our decisions affect the world's most vulnerable people? Jim Wallis is the author of The Great Awakening, Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners and blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Click here to get e-mail updates from Jim Wallis

May 15, 2009, 2:09 PM

A New President and a New Generation Seek a Nuclear Weapons Free Future

An important article appeared today in the Washington Post. It lays out the "philosophical shift" from the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration on nuclear weapons policy. Last month in Prague, Barack Obama committed to seek a "world without nuclear weapons" in a historic shift from many previous administrations. In that vision, the new president is now joined by prominent voices from some of those past administrations. A group of prominent former officials -- Republicans George Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger, and Democrats William J. Perry and Sam Nunn -- have written two pieces in the Wall Street Journal urging "setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the action required to achieve that goal... ." Shultz is quoted in the Post as saying, "The subject kind of fell off the table ... Now it's back up in front, because people see the dangers." There are four upcoming policy decisions where the new Obama commitment could be felt: the U.S.-Russian strategic-arms treaty, an international treaty banning nuclear testing, an agreement on halting production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, and strengthening the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the same time, a new project was launched last week, led by a new generation of Evangelical Christians, called The Two Futures Project. Its mission is "a movement of American Christians for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. We believe that we face two futures and one choice: a world without nuclear weapons or a world ruined by them. The initiator of this most hopeful effort is Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, who said in the press launch last week, "It's not about conservatives becoming in favor of a liberal issues. It's about evangelicals raising an authentically Christian voice about a nonpartisan issue," George Shultz was on the call with the young Evangelicals and said ""What human being thinks that he or she should have that kind of power to unleash that kind of destruction?" I was happy to be one of the early endorsers of this project -- when Tyler first called me about his exciting new idea, I almost wept. The experience of having worked so hard for so many years on the issue of the nuclear arms race, and then having a new generation take up the mantle of that mission is a source of great delight for me, and of thankfulness to God. And having nothing to do with the initiation of it, except just to endorse it, is even a greater delight. The Spirit is indeed at work in this new generation of Christians who refuse to separate their faith from justice and peace. The juxtaposition of a new president's and a new generation of believer's commitment to freeing the world from the danger, tyranny, and idolatry of nuclear weapons couldn't be more timely. To reverse the habits of the heart, the assumptions, and policies that have dominated U.S. national security policy for more than 60 years will be a monumental achievement. And the pressures against that happening will be enormous. This is indeed a job for faith, and the energetic commitment of the faith community to accomplish this magnificent goal will be absolutely crucial. Perhaps after all the years of struggle on the huge theological and political issues surrounding nuclear weapons, the time for new beginning has finally come to eventually end their threat to our world, our humanity, and our faith.

May 8, 2009, 4:51 PM