Consistent Ethic of Life: Healing

“As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned.” Jesus then “spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes, and said to the man, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam.” So he went and washed, and came back healed, able to see .”

Jesus’ most consistent and significant action was healing. His witness shapes the healing ministry of disciples. For example, Saints and sisters Zenaida and Philonella, as well as Saints and brothers Cosmos and Damian, were physicians who offered healing freely (ca 100 and 280 A.D). It is early disciples who shifted the paradigm on healthcare toward the common people and originated the hospital. It is why Catholic healing centers include thousands of hospitals and homes for the elderly and  clinics and orphanages. It is why Seventh Day Adventists, one rather small Protestant denomination, has hundreds of such such healing centers. These healing organizations and others operate across the world. In a sense, they offer universal healthcare. Universal healthcare also means people having access to quality healthcare services when and where they need them, without discrimination or financial hardship, which are sometimes judged as if a sin. But neither are sins. The sin is the U.S. healthcare system that denies people access to quality healthcare, specifically because it discriminates due to finances. The wealth class has always shaped healthcare policy. Doctors practicing the Hippocratic oath from the 4th century BC on made house calls but usually for wealthy patrons in control of decisions for taxes and public services. Across history, the wealth class generally excluded common people from common goods like public decision making, education, and healthcare. Nation states and empires over the centuries, in order to return their soldiers / slaves to the battlefield, ran military hospitals but not for use by the public, nor were they concerned for public healthcare. The U.S. Empire had no public healthcare nor concern about it for Native people and Black slaves, nor for laborers. The Industrial Revolution, beginning in approximately 1870 in the U.S., involved dangerous work. Unions formed and grew stronger to safeguard workers from catastrophic job injury and illness and their resultant catastrophic financial loss. Unions, at the cost of members lives, struggled with the private plunder companies to provide protection, such as safety and health measures. Unfortunately, the companies usually made sure such measures were controlled by other private plunder companies such as health insurance businesses. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt called for “the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use.” In 1923 a union of teachers in Dallas formed a collective to secure healthcare through a local hospital via a pre-paid monthly fee of $0.50. In 1939 in California, a collective of workers in lumber and mining camps did the same by paying monthly healthcare fees to groups of physicians. Upon election as president in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt implemented various social relief efforts to curb capitalism’s catastrophic poverty and joblessness. One was the 1935 Social Security Act. But Congress refused to include in it a federally sponsored collective healthcare insurance ingredient. Opponents deemed it a “socialist” threat to the U.S.  Truman proposed universal healthcare in 1945 and again in 1949 to scathing opposition as “socialist.” Insurance companies, but also the century old American Medical Association, worked to destroy universal healthcare. The AMA called universal healthcare “un-American” and in 1962 financed an opposition publicity campaign about its “socialist” dangers. Their hired spokesman, Ronald Reagan, asserted it “imposes socialism… (and) disguises a medical program as a humanitarian project.” Ever since, capitalists, like Governor / President Reagan, who receive the government’s socialist healthcare including through the Office of the Attending Physician, and at military facilities, have consistently denied it to common people. Capitalists label as socialism any collective efforts by common people to have the government act for them rather than, or in addition to, the ruling wealth class. These capitalists will not admit nor allow that it is Christian/Christ-like for organizations, including governments, to join in collective efforts by common people for healthcare. Nurses are among the leaders in shifting the U.S. from a wealth-based disease industrial complex to a health-base people’s wellness community. Nurses have supported policies like healthcare payroll taxes, Medicaid, Medicare, and Medicare for All so that it is not only politicians who get socialized medicine, but the people do too.

“The case for a consistent ethic of life… (includes) “devoting a considerable amount of attention to health care at both the local and national levels.” “The paramount issue of our time is the affront to human dignity that is occasioned by the lack of universal health coverage for even basic care” “The current healthcare system is so inequitable, the disparity — between rich and poor, between the sick and the well, and between those with access and those without — is so great, that it is clearly unjust” “Let it be said that the energizing vision of healthcare must be this commitment to the dignity of human persons.” (Joseph Bernardin)

Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, we share healing power.

Question: How can I contribute to practical changes for healthcare?

March 19, 2023   Gospel John 9:1-41      Fourth Sunday of Lent

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