Compassion, Christians and Health Care

I am confused. As a Christian, I was taught that to be a Christian, one has to strive to love and forgive. My mother taught me that as much or more as did the preacher at our home church. We were to have compassion, to see other people, and think about them and care about them. We were to love them even if we didn't like them.

So, I have always gotten confused when Christians have not shown love or concern or compassion for other people. The issue of forgiveness deserves a conversation in and of itself.

But on this compassion thing, I am wondering where it is as we talk about health care for all Americans, and even more specifically, health care for children. I listened briefly to CNN's Lou Dobbs cast a disparaging opinion on the number of people who are supposedly uninsured in America, and I was confused and bothered.

He succeeded in casting doubt that 46 million people are legitimately uninsured, by giving reasons why they might be in that situation. His ending sentence, paraphrased, was that in reality, only about 9 million people were or are uninsured.

Only 9 million? I took issue with his analysis and breakdown of who is insured and who is not, but even if the final number were 9 million, is it really OK with him that that is the situation? Is it OK with legislators who are trying to defeat health care legislation?

And is it OK that even the current health care legislation does not insure that all children are insured? Isn't this a pro-life issue? Shouldn't at least those who say they are pro-life be up in arms, protesting that the children who are born are in large measure born only to die an early death, or at least have a quality of life that is poor because they are sick?

Doesn't that bother somebody?

I am trying to figure out why there is so much resistance to people having health care in this nation of Christians. How is it OK that people are having to choose between getting medicine or eating, or how is it OK that people are dying from diseases that might have been stopped before they got serious, had the people just had health care?

With children, the situation is even more dire. The Children's Defense Fund estimates that 13.3 million children in America are poor, living in working families. Nine million children alone are uninsured; 500,000 pregnant women are uninsured, meaning they bring sick babies into the world who either cannot get care or end up months in neonatal ICUs costing thousands of dollars, only to be released with illnesses not yet in check, and no prospect of getting the medical care they need.

It makes me shiver to think about how many kids whom the schools label behavior problems are actually sick, some undiagnosed autistic, some deaf or nearly deaf, some suffering from juvenile diabetes, or asthma, some not being able to see, and many just plain hungry.

I keep remembering the story of a young boy who died from an abscessed tooth because he could not get health care in time.

Whoever heard of a child dying from an abscessed tooth in this, the wealthiest nation in the world?

Or I think of the young boy whose chemotherapy for cancer was interrupted because the paperwork for his Medicaid got lost in the system, and for four months, he was subjected to experimental treatment while the paperwork, completed twice, was found and processed.

How many women have breast cancer and cannot get treated, or cannot get a mammogram to get it diagnosed before it becomes terminal? Or how many men are walking around with prostate cancer for the same reasons?

The situation would not bother me so much if this nation were not so wealthy. Congresspeople and senators have excellent health care. The rich have good health care. It used to be that mostly the poor didn't have health care or access to health care, but now, with the economy so bad, even the middle class is starting to feel the tragedy of being a stranger in what is supposed to be a familiar, friendly and caring land.

All this talk about health care for everyone being socialist is nothing more than politics, I am afraid, and I would ask the "people of faith" that if health care for everyone is socialist, what is it when only the financially able can afford it? Is that capitalism, and, since we are a capitalist nation, we are supposed to be content with that, God's will notwithstanding?

Because I don't think it's God's will for children to be dying from preventable diseases, and I don't think it's God's will for adults to have to choose between health care and a mortgage payment in this, the land of the free and home of the brave.

I don't think it's right, or God's will, that people with cancer run the risk of dying because their insurance won't pay for all of the chemotherapy they need. I don't think it's right, or God's will that a parent prays that his or her child doesn't get asthma because, after the hospital visit, he or she won't be able to afford the medicines they need to survive.
Sick children become sick adults ...which in the end, will only weaken this country and make it sick.

Surely, people of faith understand that, and also know that God would want all of his/her children to get adequate health care.

By Susan K. Smith  |  July 21, 2009; 5:22 PM ET
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Posted by: jaeschbury | August 5, 2009 4:22 PM
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