Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/health/page/19/)
About health and the struggle for universal health care.
Organizing as a Healing Process: A Fresh Look at PTSD is a Netroots Nation panel discussion about organizing as a tool for spiritual healing. Panelists discuss historical trauma, genocide and troop PTSD in the context of social justice.
This week’s D’Var Torah at streetprophets is about laws, t’shuvah and Ted Kennedy. Our Moses will not lead us into the promised land of health care reform. We must fight this battle on our own.
America’s existing social inequalities threaten the success of a fledgling single payer system. The author draws upon her experience directing a health and human services department in one of America’s poorest communities to explain why a robust public option is a credible route to health care reform, and suggests ways that the reader can participate in that fight.
Rush Limbaugh has gone on the warpath over the VA’s advanced-care directives planning booklet, Your Life Your Choices. He’s describing it as a “death book” designed to kill off our veterans, when in fact, it is a quality of life tool that empowers veterans to clearly articulate their wishes. Without advanced-care directives, our veterans and their families would suffer, either from being forced to undergo treatments they didn’t want, or by being denied treatment that they did want. One of the most important ways the VA takes exceptionally good care of my father is by making sure the treatment he’s receiving is based on HIS wishes. With him slipping further into dementia, it was critical for them to get his wishes for handling extraordinary situations on the record.
Despite the fact that some individuals have shown up at the town hall meetings literally armed, left progressives need to continue to seriously identify and attack the strongest links (not the weakest) in the ideological repertoire of those who are so rabid in their opposition to the Obama healthcare plan. This means that focusing on the “will my granny be put to death” argument is only a distraction. This is not among the strongest arguments that congeal whatever opposition to this healthcare plan emanates from the broadly defined right-wing. It is definitely the strangest, perhaps.
The religious community had high expectations for the conference call with President Obama today, but the call itself was a disappointment. Obama himself was only on for about seven minutes (to hear his bit, download the podcast and scroll to 30:29). He restated why it is urgent for people to let their elected representatives know their concerns about health care and why we need health care reform. He took on some of the popular misconceptions that the Right has been spreading and showed why they were wrong. What he did not do is answer the challenges from the Left — e.g. those articulated by Dennis Kucinich on Tikkun’s website or Bob Herbert’s piece yesterday in the New York Times arguing that the Obama plan, as now whittled down, would actually be a give-away to the insurance industry and forestall serious reform.
Today a faith-based coalition will host a nationwide telephone call-in with President Barack Obama about health insurance reform. Participating in this gathering — by telephone or online — is an important opportunity to show your support for patient’s rights. You can join the national call-in with President Obama today — Wednesday, August 19th — at 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time. 2 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Simply log on to faithforhealth.org in the minutes approaching the call, or dial 347-996-5501 (no pass code, long-distance charges may apply).
Here’s a smart piece by Jeff Cohen that says the netroots and liberal campaigners for health care this summer have made a huge mistake by pushing for a public option instead of going all out for Medicare for All. If everyone who wants universal health care pushed for Medicare for All, maybe we would come out of it at least with a decent public option. If we all just push for a decent public option, maybe we’ll come out of it with a toothless public option or no public option at all. Had liberal groups sent out millions of emails building a movement that posed an existential threat to the health insurance industry, Senator Baucus and Blue Dog Democrats and their corporate health care patrons might well be on their knees begging for a comprehensive public option – to avert the threat of full-blown Medicare for All. The article was written two weeks ago but is still totally on the money and is worth highlighting today, the first day of the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh.
That 47 million people in the United States do not have health insurance, that millions more are underinsured, that millions more live in fear of losing their insurance if they lose their jobs is a sin and a shame. When I was a little girl and my elders would observe some stupid bad behavior in the family, community, church or world, they would shake their heads and with a “tsk tsk” and say: “that is just a sin and a shame.” Religion speaks of sin. We sin when we break the laws of God, when we commit an offense that breaks righteous relationship with God, humanity and creation. Sin happens when we become caught in the deception that we exist in an atomistic individuality.