Parts of the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” could easily end up on the chopping block this week. With it would go the “individual mandate”, or a requirement to either be covered or pay a tax, while expanding Medicare for a portion of the population meeting a certain level of income.
While, in theory, the individual mandate would drive down general insurance costs, this is yet to be tested. It is probable that an individual mandate would simply enrich private insurance companies. Without a competing, public health service available to all, we must take on faith that profit-minded insurance companies would lower their prices for the average American.
A national public health care system, like those found in most Western and Eastern nations, would be a much better solution. An opt-in public system could compete with private companies while providing medical care and support to those in need.
Hospitals and medical care have long been basic tenants of faith praxis. Starting in ancient Greece (the home of today’s modern medicine), temples and priests provided the most advanced medical care available, with clean spaces available and libraries of case studies and medical reports available for research.
Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and Muslims have all founded areas where the sick may be cared for, and medical research may be advanced, since the most ancient of times. Pooling resources to care for the sick was seen as the utmost expression of charity, and is universal to all faiths.
Many of our modern hospitals in America were founded by religious denominations, many in an era before health care costs skyrocketed for the private citizen, and medical care could be more widely available.
With Jesus, the gentle healer, as an example for Christians in America, it is thoroughly unChristian and unloving to deny health care to those who simply lack the funds under our pricey and luxurious health care system. People of faith should put their money where their mouth is and demand a public health care system that does not discriminate between the rich and the poor.
