à Jesus did healthcare.  He likened his own ministry to that of a physician. One fifth of the material in the gospels is concerned with the healing work of Jesus. 

à His disciples did healthcare.  Paul took his second and third missionary journeys with a physician.  More than one third of the New Testament is written by a doctor. 

à The church did healthcare.  Scholars hold that the early Christian church was the founder of organized healthcare in the fourth century.  Churches served as hospitals during the Middle Ages and faithfully tended to the ravages of the plagues. 

 

 In a more contemporary context, almost all of the hospitals in our cities across this nation were begun by religious organizations (i.e. locally Hollywood Presbyterian, Cedars of Lebanon, Lutheran Medical Center).  Historically, when there was the need for acute care medical facilities in the emerging cities of our nation, it was the communities of faith that worked to raise the funds and build the hospitals that have served our communities for decades.  It is odd that we were competent to build these facilities, but deemed unable to manage them. 

 

 But now the healthcare system needs healing.  An unconscionable disparity exists between the service provided to those with healthcare and those without any, currently over 44 million citizens.  I’ve seen it firsthand not only as a parish pastor, but having served both as the Protestant chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills and as a volunteer at the USC LA County Hospital and its’ AIDS Clinic.  A dentist once told me. “With insurance, you get your tooth drilled and filled; without (healthcare) insurance, you lose the tooth.”  Sadly that paradigm permeates our current healthcare provision.  And it gets worse….

 

 In the early years of the AIDS crisis I often witnessed case managers and nurses from different medical insurance companies roaming the halls of Cedars-Sinai, trying to identify patients who were receiving AIDS-related drugs or treatment.  Within days, despite being current with their premiums and having ‘paid in’ for years (in one

case, 18 years) the patient would receive a written notice that they had lost their healthcare insurance.  The patient would immediately be transferred from the ‘art museum’ also known as Cedars-Sinai to the ‘dungeon’ environment of the USC County Hospital.  I learned that the appeal process to get back one’s health insurance could take as long as three years.  At that time people with AIDS were dying at an aggressive rate and did not have the time, much less the energy to fight to get back their health insurance.  I would drive home and see the Snoopy billboards that would say “Get Met.  It pays!” and knew that it didn’t, that they too often betrayed their patients when they needed them the most.  Metropolitan, however, was not alone in this practice. 

 

 I believe with many others, that healthcare is a right, not a privilege.  There are those who feel the church and other religious organizations need to stay out of the debate; that it is political.  Granted there are political hurdles to overcome, but the need for appropriate healthcare needs to move beyond politics to effect the compassion that we as a society are fully capable of.  It is time for the religious communities once again to play a vital leading role in the area of healthcare provision.  

 

 At the 2003 ELCA National Assembly, our church passed a Social Statement on Healthcare that I commend to your reading.  (Copies are available at church or you can download them directly from the Internet at www.elca.org.)  One of the summary statements follows: We urge all people to advocate for access to basic health care for all and to participate vigorously and responsibly on the public discussion on how best to fulfill this obligation. 

 

 Our own state of California may be leading the way toward universal health care with State Bill 921, currently before the legislature.  It would overhaul our entire system and creates a single-payer plan that, like Medicare, would provide healthcare insurance for all Californians.  I ask you to study it.

 

 One day Jesus’ disciples asked him why a particular man was born blind; was it the sins of his parents or his own? Rather than affirming a perception that God uses disease as punishment for sin, what Jesus showed his disciples was that what stood before them was an opportunity for healing.  He acted to heal that man.  That opportunity for healing stands before us everyday in every encounter.

FALLEN FROM THE DESK OF PASTOR WAYNE