The Long View Of Health Care

I remember when Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights bill.

White reaction in my home state was apocalyptic with anger and fear. People were certain - our nation was ruined.

I recall playground conversations - kids echoing what they had heard at home: Would it be better to move to Canada or to South Africa? Canada was too cold. South Africa knew how to handle their race issues: Apartheid.

For so many, the Civil Rights legislation was the worst thing our nation had done since Reconstruction.

They despaired for our future. In the South, we lived with several years of violence as black citizens tried to exercise their right to register and to vote.

But today, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is regarded with pride as a landmark moment for justice and equality.

The following year, congress passed Medicare and Medicaid. “Socialized medicine.” (George H. W.

Bush). “… why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink?” (Barry Goldwater) “If you don’t do this and I don’t do this (stop publicly-funded health care), one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” (RonaldReagan, 1961)

But Medicare and Social Security are lauded today for giving dignity and assurance for all of us as we age, and Medicaid has been a successful safety net for the poor, especially children.

Fear and anger abounds again in 2010 through the debate and passage of the health reform act. My hunch is that in fifty years the word “Obamacare” will be a word of pride, not of ridicule.

Until 2010, uninsured Americans passed on the cost of their unaffordable health care to the rest of us - through hospital write-offs leading to higher hospital costs, and therefore higher insurance costs for the rest of us. Living without health insurance is like driving without car insurance. The rest of uspay for the wrecks.

Because uninsured people tend not to seek preventative care, they often postpone seeking treatment until their condition has become more serious, even chronic. Itis much more expensive to treat illnesses at advanced stages than with preventative care.

Medical expenses cause almost two-thirds of all bankruptcies.

For years the U.S. has paid almost twice as much per capita for our health care as the residents of other developed nations.

Yet we’ve lagged way behind in so many outcome measurements: infant mortality, mortality amenable to health care, etc.

While Medicaid and Medicare spend only 2 percent of their funds on non-medical expenditures, private insurance spends multiples of that in paperwork, advertisement and profits: from 5 percent to 40 percent. The new law provides rebates when non-medical expendituresexceed 15 percent.

Obamacare extends health care to more than 32-million previously uninsured Americans. It closes many loopholes that blocked access to insurance and will create insurance exchanges to make health insurance more affordable.

Recent Congressional Budget Office calculations expect the act to reduce the deficit $138 billion over a decade.

But not many people understand the complicated legislation, and the angry/fearful voices have dominated so much of the public discourse. Find a more neutral source andlearn what Obamacare offers America. Wikipedia does a pretty good job describing it. The non-partisan Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families website is excellent (Google “AACF health reform summary”).

During the first week of August, this newspaper published a series of articles interviewing real people in our community to see how health reform would impact them. It was a great series, and put a human face, a neighbor’s face, on the issue.

So far, I’ve mostly talked about economics and efficiencies of health care in this column. I think they offer a compelling argument for the reform measures.

But I write as a Christian pastor. I follow Jesus Christ, whose most characteristic vocation was healing.

Fearful anger is not a Christ-like emotion.

Compassionate empathy is.

With time, love will always prevail.

For a Christian, increasing access to health care is a moral imperative, and participating in systemic exclusion from health care is a sin.

From that perspective, Obamacare is a compassionate leap forward for our society. Just like Civil Rights in 1964. Just like Medicare and Medicaid in ’65.

LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE