‘The system 
has to change’

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In my family there is a hard-working, taxpaying, active-church-member, give-back-to-the-community couple who are true saints. They have suffered expense, inconvenience, heartache and even danger caring for distantly related children with intolerable home situations. They have worked all their lives at low-paying jobs, usually without health insurance.

When their only child was an infant, he suffered a high fever. As good parents should – although they had no health insurance – they took him to the hospital, where he was put in a room and virtually ignored, resulting in permanent brain damage. Despite predictions he would never even speak, his mother taught him reading, writing, math – and he nearly graduated from high school (he ran out of time after missing school due to more problems stemming from that long-ago medical neglect).

Because they had no insurance, the mother delayed seeing a doctor about her diabetes symptoms until disabling nerve damage had occurred. Unemployed, she cannot afford her $500/month medication and $160/month test strips. The son, happily working at a big box store, had a seizure and was fired. The father, laid off at the beginning of the housing slump from a good job in the housing industry, has developed a mysterious, frightening and disabling condition that is still undiagnosed.

All these folks were once taxpaying blessings to society. They consider it shameful even to consider government help – yet now, because of lack of timely health care, they are tax recipients.

The current broken health care system is impoverishing this nation, our families and our businesses. Premiums have been growing much faster than wages or small-business profits. At least 15 to 20 percent of premiums we pay goes for overhead, profit and executive salaries. Confusion and antique records systems contribute to amazing amounts of waste and poor results. Some doctors report that 40 percent of their time is spent doing paperwork and fighting for, not treating, their patients.

In 2009 the U.S. is spending $2.5 trillion, 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product on health care – a level that will only increase and strangle economic growth as well as personal financial well-being! And for all this, U.S. levels of health outcomes are wretched – the United States ranks last among 19 industrialized nations in deaths that could have been prevented by timely care. A reputable Harvard report calculates that 45,000 persons die annually because of lack of insurance. A summary of health care facts is at the National Coalition for Health Care site, nchc.org.

Jesus says we are judged by how we treat those at the lowest end of the economic spectrum – yet even those of us in the middle are hurting. The system has to change – and not simply by throwing tax money at the current profit-based health insurance system. In addition to the many needed reforms of the way we do medical records and regulate insurance industry practices, I strongly urge us all to support a strong public option – something like Medicare for everyone – to provide real competition in this industry. There’s nothing more American than competition.

The Rev. Beth Galbreath

Princeton

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