wfn.org | Board executive speaks for health care legislation

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

May 1, 2002        News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202)
546-87227Washington     10-21-71B{198}

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - An executive of the United Methodist Church's
international social action agency urged passage of a resolution that would
guarantee health care to all Americans as a moral and justice imperative. 

The Rev. Jackson H. Day of the denomination's Board of Church and Society
spoke on a five-person panel at an April 30 briefing for members of the
House of Representatives and their assistants. He spoke on behalf of the
National Council of Churches.
 
"Health care access is a moral imperative," Day said. Many religious faiths
hold that humanity was created by God and fashioned in God's image, and
"therefore deserves the sacredness and dignity appropriate to life created
by God."

He and the other panel speakers advocated passage of the Health Care Access
Resolution, House Concurrent Resolution 99, directing Congress to pass
legislation by October 2004 that would provide access to comprehensive
health care for all Americans. 

The resolution does not endorse any one model of health care but lists 14
components, according to a letter signed by 10 co-sponsors. "America's
health care system is failing," the letter begins. "It costs too much,
covers too little and excludes too many." 

Day noted that early in the Scriptures of the Jewish and Christian
traditions, the story of Cain and Abel establishes responsibility for being
one's brother's - and sister's - keeper. Jesus emphasizes the universality
of this responsibility in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

"It is a matter of honoring our common bond as brothers and sisters,
neighbors and fellow citizens. And it is a profound matter of justice," Day
said.

Stemming from the belief that all are created in God's image, and each
person is of sacred and infinite value, "it follows that none of us is of
greater value than another, and none of us is deserving of less access to
health care than another," Day said.

"Health care for all is, therefore, a matter not only of respect and
neighborliness but also very much a matter of justice," he declared.

Health care is not affordable for millions of uninsured and underinsured
people, Day noted. The variety and complexity of insurance arrangements and
health plans foster inefficiency and inequities, and the system fails to
focus on prevention and early intervention, he said. Exclusions,
pre-existing conditions and unequal care for mental illness add to the
difficulty Americans have in getting good, comprehensive care, he said.

"Every year, quality is undermined by the defects in our system, despite
frequent new initiatives to promote quality," he said.

Rather than working together, hospitals are encouraged to compete with one
another, Day said. Changes in employer-sponsored insurance plans lead to a
loss in continuity of coverage and care.

"For many people, there is freedom neither to choose a particular plan nor
to choose a physician who already knows them and their condition," he said.
The system "is complicated to access and generates paperwork rather than
reducing it," he said.

The defects in the current system are especially offensive to those in the
faith communities, Day said. "For us, reform of the health care system,
especially to provide access to all, is not only a social, political and
economic imperative but a moral imperative as well."

Other panel speakers included former board staff member Hilary Shelton, now
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
and representatives of the Association of Academic Health Centers, Consumers
Union and the Greater New York Hospital Foundation. The panel was presented
and moderated by representatives of America's Health Together.

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United Methodist News Service
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