Health

Only YOU Can Save Health Care Reform- so please ACT NOW!

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These next few weeks when Congresspeople and Senators are in their home districts is the critical moment. The Right knows that. They’ve organized their zealots to disrupt Congressional public meetings to give the false impression that there is a populist revolt against extending health care to the poor and against challenging the private insurance companies and pharmaeuticals. The liberals have disempowered themselves by trying to come up with health care plans that extend coverage but meanwhile protect the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and hospital/medical profiteers. The only way they can do that is to raise the costs on the Middle Class, either through taxes or through reduction of services or through hidden price increases.

Health

Dear Rabbi Saperstein

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Dear Rabbi Saperstein, I didn’t mention it in my blog post this morning about the press conference for the religious campaign for health care reform, but you said something I wanted to ask you about. A reporter from Gannett or somewhere mainstream asked if by emphasizing the moral imperative to provide universal healthcare, the campaign was going to judge any Senator or Representative who failed to vote for the final reform package as “immoral.” It was a loaded question, that could have made a nice headline in conservative newspapers: Religious Left Accuses Republicans of Immorality. Jim Wallis answered first and got fairly close to saying that it would indeed be morally unacceptable to fail to pass some version of universal healthcare, though he didn’t want to specificy which version. He didn’t want to rank various options in terms of how much they might actually embody care for patients’ health.

Health

Follow Up on G-d Please Protect Me from the Government Health Care My Father Gets

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A while back I wrote a post about the incredibly wonderful health care my father receives from the VA. I got a lot of comments on that post, including questions about the disease afflicting my father and the medication that caused his condition to worsen. I write this new post with two thoughts in mind. Government health care can be superb and Americans need to know that the United States government can do, and does do, an excellent job caring for our veterans through the VA and for our senior citizens through Medicare. (Yes, I know the VA is far from perfect, but my experience with them has been fantastic.)
There’s a disease out there that is often mis-diagnosed and being put on the wrong medication can and does kill people. I want folks to know about this disease so that they can protect themselves and their loved ones from being put on the wrong medication.

Health

Obama and the Religious Health Care Reformers

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Just been on a fascinating conference call with Jim Wallis and David Saperstein and others, organized by PICO National Network, Faith in Public Life, Faithful America, Sojourners and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. They announced a major step up of their campaign for universal health care, and a coup for this movement: President Obama will join them on a conference call and audio webcast next Wednesday, August 19. You are invited to join the call! Details will be posted at a new website: faithforhealth.org. Details of the rest of the campaign, including first TV ad to be placed by this coalition on health care, many local events etc.

Health

Healthcare Within the Context of Human Rights

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Before the United States was a nation, before it boasted the most powerful military on earth, before its economic, educational, scientific and cultural influence made it a leader of the world, the founders understood that they owed “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” They knew the nation they were bringing to birth would be part of a family of nations. Thus, they wrote the first of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is a document that established a foundation for human rights. (I recognize the internal contradictions of slavery, blindness to women’s rights and a lack of respect for indigenous peoples made this and other early declarations of human rights far from perfect.) Human rights are rights that inhere in the human person by virtue of her/his humanity.

Health

Narisula for President – Health Care for All?

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In 2002, a young Afghan boy named Nasrulah (we called him Narisula) taught me a lesson in government as we sat in the rubble-strewn mess that served as his home. The Afghans were in the midst of holding a Loya Jurga, a gathering of leaders of tribes, villages and cities across the country, who in a huge tent in Kabul would set the new direction for the country. We were there as part of an interfaith peace delegation, organized by Global Exchange. Months earlier, the Taliban had fled under the onslaught of coalition bombs. Narisula had become the victim of a U.S. cluster-bomblet that had not exploded on impact, and awaited him and his cousin on their way to school.

Health

Why Can't Obama Convince the Dems?

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It’s easy enough to blame the spineless Congressional Dems for the failure of the health care plan. But their worry about rising costs is not totally irrational. It’s great to see President Obama finally striking out at the Republicans who want no progress and are trying to block every plan for a reason that is despicable: their desire to have Obama fail so that they can go to the election of 2010 and say: “See, this nice guy accomplished nothing.” And it’s great to see the President starting to talk about the destructive role played by the insurance companies. Both of these switches in his oratory may be too little, too late.

Culture

Death Defying – 2

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As I said yesterday, Wicca (my religion) may take an integrated view of death as a part of life, but I was raised here in the old U.S. of A. And that means that death can be just as hard for me to face as the next American. If we look at contemporary American culture, it’s clear that we’re a death-denying society. Death is one of our final taboos. For secularists in the US, death no longer has metaphysical implications. It is the end of life and as such has a physical finality that even in the near past would have been hard to imagine.

Health

The Price of Free

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America: land of the brave and home of the free. Free. One of my favorite words. Yes, equality and rights to freedom are excellent, but what I really enjoy are free giveaways. Today Starbucks is holding free pastry day – anyone who comes in with a coupon, easily printed off the Internet, and orders a beverage will receive one free pastry of choice.