|
||||||||
| Why Are Our Neighbors Hungry? | |||||||
|
Each week, the Long Island Council of Churches feeds hundreds of hungry people. Why do so many of our neighbors need emergency food? Twenty years ago, most of those who sought a bag of groceries were out of work or permanently unemployable. Today, they are often working full-time or have retired after a lifetime of labor and cannot make ends meet. They do not need assistance once or twice while they are between jobs—they need help every month. The biggest reason that they need supplemental food is, of course, the lack of affordable housing, a crisis that is now found across our nation: there is no longer a single county in America where someone working full time at minimum wage can afford an apartment. The second most important cause of hunger among our neighbors, though—and this may surprise you—is lack of medical insurance. 45 million Americans have no medical coverage whatsoever, including one in five New Yorkers. Many of the rest of us have inadequate insurance. The prophets told the people of God over and over again to defend "the orphan, the widow, and the sojourner among you"—in other words, the most vulnerable members of society—but we leave many orphans, widows, and immigrants to fend for themselves, uninsured. Do you know what is the most rapidly growing part of our clientele in Suffolk County? Senior citizens. They all have Medicare but cannot afford their prescriptions or cannot figure out their Medicare Drug Benefits. It is wonderful that dozens of churches and other organizations gather canned goods to feed them and that so many people across the Island donate money that pays the rent, utilities, and salaries that keep our emergency food centers going, but it breaks my heart to see the elderly forced to ask for charity, many of them for the first time in their lives. The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee basic health care to its citizens. The only Americans who have a constitutional right to treatment are those incarcerated in federal prisons. The LICC has long favored some sort of universal coverage but there are many possible ways of achieving this. Reasonable people may differ as to how we should fix the mess we have now, but how can anyone doubt that there is something wrong when children are born handicapped—and will cost our society huge amounts of money in the long run – because their mothers do not have prenatal care? Don't we all see that it is unjust for the families of those called up for National Guard duty in Iraq to not be able to afford to go to the doctor? In the process of completing a biography of Kaahumanu, the Queen Regent of Hawaii, I have uncovered two interesting facts. One reason that her husband Kamehameha earned the title "the Great" was that he instituted free medical care. And shortly after Calvinist missionaries arrived in 1820 from New England they excommunicated a missionary physician who committed the unpardonable sin of treating the sick on the basis of their ability to pay. Massachusetts is to be applauded for the progress they have made recently toward universal coverage, but the state of Hawaii achieved something like this 30 years ago, and the Kingdom of Hawaii did so 200 years ago. Canadians take a different approach to providing than do the British, whose system is not the same as that in Germany, but no other country has anything as incomprehensible, inefficient, and unequal as ours. According to the World Health Organization, we pay far more for medical care than anyone else on the planet but 36 other nations have a higher quality health care system. The cost of providing health coverage for those lucky enough to have decent insurance makes it hard for their employers to compete with companies in Europe or Japan. In the last five years the average worker has spent 93% more on out-of-pocket medical expenses, while physicians have been forced to employ whole armies of staff to with HMOs for reimbursement. James G. Kahn of the University of California Medical School in San Francisco has calculated that if we had a single-payer plan, would save $161 billion a year on paperwork alone. Most Canadians have a few gripes about their own National Health Insurance, but I have yet to meet one who would trade it for our monstrosity. Nearly everyone thought that Bill Clinton's proposal for universal coverage was too complicated, but if he had proposed Medicare Part D he would have been impeached for sure. So that is why your hardworking fellow citizens are hungry, why so many people do not go to the doctor when they are sick, and at least a small part of why American jobs are being lost and it is hard to recruit good workers for many positions. If we are not outraged, we are not paying attention. Shalom/Salaam/Shanti/Pax, Tom |
|
||||||
 |
 |