Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/health/page/13/)
About health and the struggle for universal health care.
It is a legitimate expectation to expect our elected representatives–Democrats and Republicans– to find a way to give this nation comprehensive healthcare reform. And if they do not, we will remember in November.
After spending most of my day wondering how the Democratic Party managed to pull off the stunning achievement of losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to a far right wing former centerfold model, I am feeling reassured. The dust is settling and the panorama does not look so bad. In fact, the future looks far brighter to me than it has for weeks. Obama has acknowledged that White House bears more than a little responsibility for the loss. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that he has scheduled a press conference tomorrow to announce his adoption of Paul Volcker’s strategy to break up and regulate “too big to fail banks.”
In response to one of the comments on my humorous post “Satan Responds to Pat Robertson on Haiti,” I found this article on the Voodoo view of the quake. Vodou is the earth-based religion of Haiti, so it makes sense that a Vodou priest would view his country as a manifestation of Mother Earth. From the Washington Post:
Voodoo’s view of the quake in Haiti
By Elizabeth McAlister
Associate Professor of Religion, Wesleyan University
Vodouists in the Haitian diaspora are praying on their knees today, just as Catholics and Protestants are. Why did this devastating earthquake have to happen in Haiti, a country already so vulnerable that people live on a dollar a day, where on a good day, the government cannot employ or educate or provide health care for the majority? In Port-au-Prince, they are coping by searching and rescuing, sharing resources, crying, and praying.
“I hope that there is a change in consciousness, but how could it ever be claimed that it came from me? Any change will do, even if it just pisses the person off! That could be a beginning to something great. Right?” — John Neilson
It is the gift and the burden of each of us to live the life we are given.
I’ve spent the last two weeks in a funk, listening to the debates about the future of health care reform. I am pleasantly surprised by two phenomena: 1] public dialogue around health care is both vibrant and incredibly substantive ; and 2] conservatives have absented themselves from discussion. I grew accustomed to palliatives and drivel during the Bush years. (Remember when plastic sheeting and duct tape were promoted as public health policy? In the event of an epidemic, we were instructed to wrap our homes in plastic!) I am surprised at the enthusiasm and diversity of our civic dialogue.
In recent days, in response to the disappointing health care and climate change initiatives, several commentators have described Obama as a “pragmatist.” Ross Douthat, for instance, calls him “a doctrinaire liberal,” but one “who’s always willing to cut a deal and grab for half the loaf.” According to Ryan Lizza, “every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them.” For David Axelrod, referring to health care, “The president wasn’t after a Pyrrhic victory — he wasn’t into symbolism. The president is after solving a problem that has bedeviled a country and countless families for generations.”
This piece, “Pass the Health Care Bill – Then Improve It,” by Peter Dreier (whose pieces appear in Tikkun from time to time) is worth reading. For those who don’t know, I post occasional articles here and at Current Thinking on the Tikkun home page that I think help us understand what’s going on. The previous article posted at Current Thinking was Jane Hamsher’s “Top 10 Ten Reasons To Kill the Senate Health Care Bill,” so you can see I am not trying to find pieces that agree with each other, nor do they necessarily express my own views.
My friend, the Rev. Geoff Browning is a campus minister at Stanford University and a peacemaking advocate in the Presbyterian Church’s San Jose Presbytery. He wrote this essay and has given me permission to share it with Tikkun Daily visitors. The title should give you a guess as to where Geoff is going with this one (don’t fall asleep while reading it or you’ll get three visitors……)
Health Care for All? Bah Humbug! With every passing week, the debate over health care reform is sounding more and more like something out of a Dickens novel.
This was my father’s second Christmas season living in his “board and care” home. Jocelyn, the amazing woman who runs this and several other houses had arranged for children from her church to come to the house and sing carols for the residents and their families. If you ever wondered whether such small acts of kindness make a difference, stop wondering. They do. My father has a condition known as “Lewy Body Dementia” which has Parkinsons symptoms plus intense hallucinations, sleep-walking / acting out dreams physically, and an overall decline in cognition.
Winter solstice is time of greatest darkness, which of course is why so many cultures have festivals of lights at this time. But in our culture the lights have gotten over the top, with thousands of lights blazing as you walk down the road, and when you get to the mall at the end of the road (all our roads may not lead to Rome, but most lead to a mall) the lights have become so bright there are no longer any shadows. That’s a profound loss. In the shadows lie our deep fears, and this time of the year traditionally allowed us to look at those fears, to name those shadows, and to learn how they connect to us. If we don’t connect to our shadows, we never grow up, and (like my namesake) we can only live in never never land.