Health Care Reform

UPDATE: On Dec 24, the Senate passed a landmark health care bill by a vote of 60-39 along party lines. The Senate now needs to reconcile the bill with the House of Representatives version, which has passed more liberal health-care reform legislation, and those talks could stretch through January and perhaps into February.  

That how a government treats the poor and the weak is a key indicator of a society’s commitment to justice is taught in all the prophets and in psalms like Psalm 72.  (Our World Belongs to God: A Contemporary Testimony)

Good health is the will of God for each and every one of God’s children. Death, disease, and pain did not exist in the Garden of Eden, and Revelation tells of a “new heaven and new earth,” where once again they will not exist.

In the fallen world in which we live, injury and sickness are a fact of life; physical death on this earth will never be overcome. But scripture paints a clear picture that health was God’s intent from the beginning and will be the goal once again in the end. This means that on a personal, national, and global level the physical well-being of all God’s children is close to God’s heart -- and should be close to ours as well.

There is no religious mandate for a specific, God-ordained system of health care or insurance. No amount of biblical exegesis will lead you to a policy conclusion about health care savings accounts, personal versus employer-provided insurance, single-payer public systems, or private insurance plans.

But these policy questions are still of vital importance.  With an issue like health -- deeply personal but of great public concern -- the faith community has a unique and important role to play: to remind elected officials that health care is not just about dollars and cents, but is a moral issue of life and death. It is about whether we value the life of each person—poor, rich, or middle-class.

A Values-Based Approach to Health-Care Reform 

While all people of faith will never agree on every aspect of health-care reform, it is important that our voices be heard in ways that will truly impact the end result. Below are areas on which there is broad agreement within the faith community: 

 What You Can Do to Bring a Christian Perspective to the Debate:

  1. Take time to pray on this issue and discuss personal experiences with health care with your friends and neighbors.
  2. Continue to educate yourself about the health-care debate. Don’t believe everything that comes into your e-mail inbox or that is said on TV.  Get the facts at FactCheck.org, a trusted source of non-partisan myth-busting.
  3. Organize a Health Care Sabbath or Health Care Café in your congregation that gives people a chance to share their stories, discuss the issues and questions raised by health-care reform, and plan constructive ways your congregation can act together to keep the health-care debate moving forward.
  4. Tell our leaders what is really important in the health-care debate.  Sign Sojourners' Health-Care Creed today.
  5. Share your views with your members of Congress. PICO, a network of faith-based community organizations, has a toll-free hotline set up at (866) 279-5474, where you can hear a short update on the debate and then be connected to the offices of your senators and representatives. 

Resources