"Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, "Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, "Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.' " And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way."
“Tipping Scales of Justice”
Healthcare reform is dead – at least that’s what some want you to believe. Who are these folks? Well, they are healthcare insurance corporations, pharmaceutical companies, corporate healthcare providers and folks of a certain political persuasion who think the working poor should adopt the words, “cure yourself.” For these folks, the notion is anathema that we should bear together the healthcare needs of all our fellow human beings. It’s anathema because it puts too much dent in corporate profit margins or too much dent in the financial bottom line. But those folks can rest easy now that healthcare reform has been put off one more time. Thank you Massachusetts! Thank you that the health insurers’ most egregious practices will continue to injure and harm us all.
One of those practices in case you’re unaware, is that the industry will continue to care less that nearly 40 million of our countrymen (children, women, and men) have no health insurance coverage. Another practice is that the industry will continue to be free to deny payment for services considered medically necessary. In certain circumstances, they’ll also be free to deny payment for treatment of pre-existing conditions. They will also be able to continue to place spending caps on someone’s healthcare. And when the going gets tough and a patient’s treatment becomes too costly, they’ll end coverage thus leaving individuals and families headed toward bankruptcy and if the situation is bad enough, having to go onto the Medicaid rolls.
Maybe it’s time to immigrate to Canada. How about it my Canadian friends, can I come back? You at least understand that access to basic healthcare is a fundamental human right. We Americans however have to make profits off nearly anything and everything we do. In fact, it’s so firmly etched in our psyche that we’re quite content to let tens of millions of our fellow countrymen suffer without access to healthcare even with the knowledge that many of that number will probably die. Never mind that we have the costliest healthcare per capita in the world, i.e. over $8,000 per year while other countries provide basic healthcare as a right of citizenship at $3,500 or less. But we can’t do any better because the shareholders have to be taken care of. And truth be told, we don’t mind how much our health insurance costs rise each year or that the increases will lead to more of us being uninsured. What I can hear in my ears already from those delighted that healthcare reform has failed probably goes something like this, “Wonderful! Fantastic! No chance now that my taxes are going to increase to cover the uninsured. Dang it, I worked hard to get where I am and have the health benefits I do. If I did it, so can all those others who aren’t insured.”
Here’s what I think about all this if it isn’t clear already. Healthcare reform is going to happen someway somehow. It may take another 10 or 20 years, but read my lips health insurers and pharmaceutical companies, “It’s going to happen.” And along with it there will be a public option and far more cost effective means for people getting the medicines and medical care they need. So like the priests, rabbis, and Pharisees of the Nazareth synagogue so long ago who tried to kill off Jesus and the reform that he sought to bring for a more compassionate approach to the world, you too should get to thinking about a different way of doing things. You’re going to need a completely overhauled business model, a totally new business plan, or perhaps a new line of business altogether. This country will get fed up with you and your sense of entitlement and your contribution to skyrocketing healthcare costs.
Why do I say this, well it’s because a step was taken in the right direction in the early 1990s. It involved a minor piece of healthcare reform. It gave us portability, meaning that if we had already been covered by insurance through an employer and then that coverage ended due to going to a new job, then it was illegal for the new insurer at the new job to refuse to cover a pre-existing condition for months or a year or more. Other steps have been taken in the years since to hold you even more accountable.
This time health insurers, you nearly had your head handed to you on a silver platter for your inhumanity, greediness, and willing failure to serve ALL of your fellow citizens. One vote was all that things fell short of bringing a profoundly new reality to your way of being. Yes, another 10 or 20 years ought to do it insurers and pharma. Enjoy the lavish boardrooms, the big perks, the costly bonuses that come at others expense. For even though the synagogue goers tried to throw Jesus and his movement off the cliff after he pronounced that things were going to change, they were not successful and the movement became more alive and prominent then anything anyone had ever seen before. That’s what will happen as well to efforts to try and kill off healthcare reform. And like Jesus, it will be back and eventually back with so much power that you’ll want to run and hide like the demons Christ cast out so that lives could genuinely heal.
“Justice rolls like a river,” insurers and pharma and medical providers. Have you ever heard the song? If not, I suggest you check it out because justice is a coming and it’s a coming soon!
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