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Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly Affirms Support for HR 676

From: www.uua.org

(Ft. Lauderdale, June 29, 2008)—The 2008 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) concluded its five-day meeting by adopting resolutions on a broad slate of social justice issues, from opposing a US attack on Iran to advocating for a higher minimum wage. In addition to tending to official business, the 3,000 attendees from all fifty states and several foreign countries worshipped, celebrated, rallied, and attended classes at “UU University” to learn how to be more effective in their home congregations.

Six resolutions on urgent social issues, called “Actions of Immediate Witness” (AIWs) were passed. Five actions passed overwhelmingly, with little or no debate: End Present Day Slavery in the Fields, Oppose a U.S. Attack on Iran, Raise the Federal Minimum Wage to $10 in 2010, Extend the Tax Credit for Wind and Solar Power, and Oppose the Florida and California Marriage Protection Initiatives. The only proposed action with a significant opposition was Single Payer Health Care, which still passed by a two-thirds majority. Unitarian Universalists will be active advocates for these positions through the fall elections and beyond.

Presbyterian Church (USA) Supports HR 676

From: www.pcusa.org

by Erin S. Cox-Holmes

SAN JOSE, June 27, 2008 — The Health Issues Committee, the last committee on the docket at the end of a very long, last full day of business on Friday, led the 218th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in taking action on a variety of health-related overtures.

Single-Payer Health Care System: The Assembly adopted a recommendation supporting national health care reform, calling for advocacy and education that pursues “the goal of obtaining legislation that enacts single-payer, universal national health insurance as the program that best responds to the moral imperative of the gospel.”

Missing the Boat on Health Care?
FromTikkun

As we face the 2008 presidential campaigns, the stakes have never been higher for health care reform. Health care is pricing itself beyond the reach of lower-income and middle-class Americans with no cost containment yet on the horizon. Seniors with Medicare are paying much more out-of-pocket for their medical care now than when Medicare was enacted in 1965.

We already have a perfect storm as the U.S. health care “system” falls apart, and many public polls put access to affordable health care at the top of our domestic agenda.

Although we spend far more than any other country in the world on health care, we have little to show for it except high prices, decreasing access, variable quality, underuse of essential care by vulnerable populations, and a significant amount of unnecessary and inappropriate care for those who can pay for it. Our enormous private health insurance industry of 1,300 insurers competes to cover healthier and lower-risk enrollees with more limited policies each year, while denying coverage of sicker individuals or raising premiums to unaffordable levels. That shifts the burden of the more costly care of sicker people to the public sector, defeating the whole principle of insurance: to spread risk broadly. Meanwhile, as the private insurance industry no longer finds growth in the employer-sponsored and individual markets, it has been shifting its sights to privatized public programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. Here it has found generous subsidies and little oversight from friendly conservatives in government.

Now would be the ideal time for leading Democrats to advance a progressive agenda for health care, such as Teddy Roosevelt did as a Progressive, with his call for national health insurance in 1912. The Republicans have been weakened by scandals, cronyism and incompetence, and have no new or credible ideas for health care reform. They still offer up only warmed-over ideas such as tax credits, health savings accounts, and how the competitive market can fix our problems, while limiting government’s responsibility for care of the poor—blatant social Darwinism. As William Greider recently observed in the Nation, “Democrats have a splendid opening to be substantive and political and righteous for working folks,all at once.”

But so far, with only one exception, the Democratic presidential candidates have been disappointing, if not derelict, in reforming the system. In their misguided efforts to avoid too much controversy and to build a “centrist consensus,” they are completely missing the target even before starting. Although Democrats in Congress united behind reauthorization of an expanded State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), that effort has diverted them from the real challenge—how to reform the system to make accessible and comprehensive health care affordable for all Americans. That would require taking on powerful stakeholders, especially the insurance and drug industries, in the medical-industrial complex, now one-sixth of our economy. All but one of the Democratic presidential contenders shy away from that battle, usually with the limp excuse that real reform is not politically feasible.

What Are the Leading Democrats Proposing?

In their rush to build consensus for universal coverage, all three leading Democratic presidential candidates avoid taking on the real culprit—a failing private health insurance industry. There is abundant evidence of the industry’s failures, such as premiums increasing by three and four times the rates of cost-of- living and median family income. Projections show that, at this rate, premiums alone will consume all of household incomes by 2025. Administrative overhead will become five to nine times higher than Original Medicare.“Denial management” is a vigorous growth area within the industry, while proliferation of near worthless limited benefit policies under the guise of insurance (e.g. deductibles up to $5,000 or annual caps as low as $1,000), and successful avoidance of regulation by state and federal regulators for many years is standard. Even as employer-sponsored insurance declines, the insurance bureaucracy keeps expanding as it seeks to exclude higher risk enrollees and keep its “medical loss ratio” attractive to investors (the industry’s often-stated goal is to keep at least 20 percent of premium revenue for overhead and profits).

Despite these mounting problems, the proposals for“reform”of each of the leading Democratic candidates would build upon the private insurance industry. Both Senators Hillary Clinton and John Edwards call for an individual mandate whereby everyone is required to buy health insurance. Senator Barack Obama stops short of universal coverage, except for children.

There are many more similarities than differences among their proposals. All would offer choice among plans and government subsidies for those unable to afford coverage. All would require employers to shoulder some of the costs of coverage. All would need additional funding ($110 billion a year for Clinton’s plan), and all support new efforts to rein in “cherry picking” by insurers. However,how these objectives would be achieved remains unclear in every case. What does seem certain is that any of these Democratic proposals, if enacted into law, would provide yet another new windfall for the private insurance industry through government subsidies for those unable to pay for coverage.And nowhere in this “debate” does the issue of actual benefits appear. Would mandated policies cover all necessary health care for all enrollees? How about cost-sharing requirements?

These proposals are too general and nebulous to know how they would be implemented. The devil is always in the details, and market stakeholders lobby their interests very effectively in and out of revolving doors from their bases on K Street.

As the current front running candidate, Senator Clinton’s plan is carefully crafted to appeal to centrist voters. Under the label of American Health Choices Plan, her individual mandate “assures affordable health coverage for all” through use of refundable tax credits, means-tested limits on premium payments to a percentage of income, promoting shared responsibility by large employers and tax credits for small employers, and expansion of Medicaid and SCH IP. Her plan adds in other trendy components as well in an effort to lower costs or improve quality of care,such as more emphasis on preventive care,disease management for chronic disease, expanded use of information technology,and health insurance purchasing pools. A new component in the Clinton plan is the proposed creation of a public Medicare-like plan intended to compete against the offerings of private plans. On the surface, this may appeal to some as a way to keep the private plans honest and even as a possible future route toward achieving publicly financed Medicare for all.

What’s Wrong With the Leading Democrat's Proposals?

Though well intended, there are many problems with all of these proposals. Unfortunately, the reasons are more intertwined and complex than we can reasonably expect to have clarified through political discourse. Leading the list by far is the failure of these proposals to address the central problem blocking reform—the private multi-payer system itself—all in the name of political compromise, without even putting single-payer on the table. In the just-released Rockridge Institute Report on “The Logic of the Health Care Debate,” George Lakoff and his colleagues describe how this kind of neoliberal thinking falls into the ‘Surrender-in-Advance Trap’ by continuing to support failed market-based policies because of political opposition to the economically and morally superior progressive approach: single-payer public financing.

A ll three leading Democratic proposals leave the private insurance industry in place. This is a bad idea for many reasons. The industry has already demonstrated its bureaucratic inefficiencies, profiteering by cherry picking and favorable risk selection, fragmentation of risk pools, and commitment to the financial bottom line rather than reliable coverage of comprehensive benefits. It is well known that 10 percent of the population account for 27 percent of all health care spending. The industry goes to great lengths to avoid these enrollees’ preference in order to market their products to the healthier majority of the population. The industry has no mechanisms or prospects to contain costs and any expansion of private financing is inflationary.

The industry has failed the public interest. It is unwilling (and unable) to compete with such public programs as Original Medicare on a level playing field. It has only survived to this point by avoiding higher-risk enrollees, increasing cost sharing, raising its premiums to increasingly unaffordable levels, and hollowing out coverage that people can afford. It does no good to mandate coverage within adequate benefits.

The much–touted Massachusetts individual mandate enacted in 2006 is a case in point. Even in a state with relatively high regulation of insurers, this mandate is already failing. The “Massachusetts Miracle”has no chance of providing universal coverage for all state residents, premiums are higher than expected, benefits remain controversial and fall far short of covering essential care, and the costs of promised government subsidies will end up much higher than anticipated. Meanwhile,of course,administrative and bureaucratic complexities have been moved up another notch. This experience also shows that mandates cannot really be enforced (the state has already lowered its initial expectations of employers, and private insurers will always respond to more mandated benefits by raising their premiums).

After some years of trials, there is still not a single example of successful mandates, whether upon employers or individuals. As long as we depend on private financing, mandates will be non-starters, though popular with politicians and welcomed by the insurance industry.

The other trendy “extras”promoted by these Democratic proposals likewise stand little chance of success. An increased emphasis on preventive care is needed and a good idea, but this can not be expected to contain health care costs. There are a few instances where costs are reduced, such as smoking cessation and wide use of seatbelts, but in most instances, health care costs go up with implementation of screening and prevention programs as new illnesses are identified, requiring follow-up and treatment.

Better management of chronic disease is certainly needed. Institutions with integrated systems such as Kaiser Permanente and Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound have done pioneering work in this area, often with improved quality but not less costs. But “disease management” (DM) programs being promoted by commercial vendors to employers and health plans are a different story. Initially started by the drug industry in the 1990's with (a stake in expanding sales of their drugs), DM programs are largely disconnected from primary care and have yet to demonstrate any long-term cost savings.
It is the same story for information technology. How can wider use of electronic medical records increase the efficiency of a multi-payer system with insurers which results in 17,000 different health plans in Chicago and more than 700 different insurance policies among 2,000 patients with depression in Seattle?

High-risk purchasing pools are another idea without any track record of success. Although 30 states have started high-risk pools, they still cover less than 200,000 people and are largely ineffective, plagued by extended waiting lists, high premiums, limited benefits, and shortfalls of state and federal funds.

A fundamental mistake of all incremental efforts now underway across the country towards universal coverage is the disconnect between insurance and health care. Here we find an increasing gap. Many people with insurance find cost-sharing an increasing burden with benefits decreasing and out-of-pocket costs taking ever larger bites from their household income. “Underinsurance” is defined by the Commonwealth Fund as medical expenses amounting to 10 percent of annual income or more (5 percent for adults below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level,which is set at $41,300 for a family of four in 2007). Yet many millions of “insured” Americans are having to spend much more than that on health care. Two million people were forced into bankruptcy by medical bills in 2001, the most recent year for which data are available; three-fourths of them were employed and insured at the outset of their medical problems.

The Medicare-like public option is an interesting idea, but does not make sense for several reasons. We have yet to show that the political process can yield a level playing field for competition between public and private programs. Another round of government subsidies would give the private insurance industry yet another opportunity to further divide the risk pool, concentrating the sick in Medicare, which could threaten its future viability. We would likely march toward even more of a two-tier system than we have now, and Medicare would face an increased risk of becoming a welfare program for sick people with significant medical problems. It would perpetuate a role for private health insurance and accept the illusion that it provides a valuable adjunct to health care financing when it is already clear that it doesn’t. The battle over the industry’s future needs to be fought, as it inevitably will. The Medicare-like option would simply delay that battle, perhaps losing an opportunity for real reform. Whatever further structures were put in place to implement the Medicare-like plan could themselves add to the obstacles of replacing an obsolete private financing system. If Medicare became excessively saddled with the most expensive care of a smaller population without adequate funding, its conservative critics could correctly claim that, “The government program can’t do the job.”

What Should the Government’s Role be in this Crisis?

We have a market-based health care system driving up its own costs beyond the reach of ordinary Americans, with government policies making things even worse through minimal oversight and regulation of the market. As the situation gets worse, we remain deeply divided over the role of government. On the Right, conservatives have been quite clear about wanting to downsize government, render it less capable, and, in the case of Medicare, privatize it and turn Original Medicare into a smaller welfare program. The Right has raised such fears over creeping socialism and “government run” programs that the Left shies away from activist government. All of the leading Democratic health proposals studiously avoid any implication of government intrusion, despite the far greater bureaucratic intrusion of privately-financed health care compared to simplified public financing.

What can we learn from history about the role of government as our health care crisis grows? In an address to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Mary-land in 1809, Thomas Jefferson’s answer was: “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” Comparing our increasing gaps in income and opportunity today with those in the Great Depression, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics and former chief economist of the World Bank, offered this perspective in 2004:

Markets do not lead to efficient outcomes, let alone outcomes that comport with social justice. As a result, there is often good reason for government intervention to improve the efficiency of the market. Just as the Great Depression should have made it evident that the market often does not work as well as its advocates claim,our recent Roaring Nineties should have made it self-evident that the pursuit of self-interest does not necessarily lead to overall economic efficiency.

But, instead of taking a progressive view of the responsibility of government to help solve our increasing problems of access, cost, quality, and equity of health care, we have the leading Democratic candidates perpetuating market approaches, with the already discredited notion that the insurance industry will respond to competition. They even take on some of the strategies of the Right, such as tax credits and purchasing pools, while offering up unpersuasive calls for cost containment, universal coverage, and improved quality of care. Despite conservative public policies favoring health care markets, as illustrated by continued over-payments and lack of oversight of private Medicare plans, these leaders remain unwilling to confront the insurance industry in the public interest.

Single-Payer National Health Insurance: The Only Effective and Sustainable Path to Universal Coverage

Only one of the six Democratic presidential candidates gets it right on health care reform. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), as co-sponsor with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) of House Bill 676, the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, has recognized for years that the private health insurance industry will always stand in the way of universal access to comprehensive health care.

This bill directly addresses the central problem of our health care system—its private financing—replacing it with a public financing system modeled after a reformed Medicare program.

A Medicare-for-All program would provide universal coverage of all necessary health care for all Americans coupled with a private delivery system. It would not be socialized medicine, but social insurance. Its extra benefits could be extended to the entire population by saving about $350 billion a year in administrative cost savings, monopsony (i.e., one dominant buyer) purchasing, and improved access with earlier diagnosis and treatment of illness. All Americans would have full choice of physicians, other licensed providers, and hospitals. Medical decision-making would stay with patients and their physicians with much less bureaucratic intrusion than we have today in our multi-payer financing system. With administrative and structural simplification, our system would be transitioned toward not-for-profit care in a more transparent and accountable way.

HR 676 is now endorsed by eighty-five sponsors in the House. It has received the support of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and some in the business community are starting to view single-payer as a way to get out from under increasingly burdensome health care costs, to maintain a healthy workforce, and to better compete in the global economy. Poll after poll shows that about two-thirds of the public supports such a role for government in assuring health care for our population.

Health care reform should be a non-partisan issue. Health care is an essential need for all of us, regardless of age, gender, race, class, religious persuasion, or political

party. Everyone wins (except perhaps some corporate stakeholders in our market-based system) when we have a healthier population in a society that pulls together, instead of being split apart over economic and health disparities. Conservatives espouse principles of efficiency, responsibility, and eliminating waste. A single-payer system would be far more efficient than a multi-payer system, would have more leverage to reduce waste, and would provide a structure for more accountability than we have today. Everyone would contribute to its funding on a shared and equitable basis. Employers would pay a payroll tax in the range of 7 percent (less than they now pay), with further funding by a pro-gressiveincometaxaveraging2percentfor most taxpayers (less than they typically now pay for premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs). With all these advantages, it is remarkable (but no surprise) how silent the media have been, dependent as they are on corporate support, in publicizing the Kucinich candidacy and single-payer reform.

Based upon its track record in recent decades, the private health insurance industry has proven itself not to be a reliable and useful base upon which to finance health care. The trend toward its demise is becoming more obvious, but is still denied by most policymakers, including many on the Left. As the number of incremental “re-form” proposals proliferate in an effort to rationalize the industry under the false guise of “market competition,” we need to ask who our health care system is for: patients and their families, or the insurance industry? Our public policy to date supports the latter.

Hazards of Political Compromise

The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) gives us a classic example of the hazards of political compromise. The central problem requiring action was the rapid escalation of drug prices and their decreasing affordability to seniors. The drug and insurance industries launched a full-court lobbying campaign, resulting in compromises such that the main problem was dodged. Instead of controlling drug prices, the MMA was a sell-out to the drug and insurance industries, providing lavish new

over-payments to private Medicare plans, prohibiting the government from negotiating discounted drug prices as is done so well by the Veterans Administration, continuing a ban on importation of prescription drugs, and establishing health savings accounts. This new structure may be with us for years. Even after the Democrats gained control of both houses in the 2006 elections, they have yet to rein in the large subsidies handed over to the drug and insurance industries.

The leading Democrats’ health care plans, if enacted, are a prescription for failure by giving the private insurance industry another bonanza: a carte blanche opportunity to sell more limited benefit policies to healthy people and prevent a structural health care fix. They would further raise costs, increase bureaucracy, enrich market stakeholders at the expense of patients, families, and taxpayers, and perpetuate markets treating health care as just another commodity to be bought and sold. Wall Street would prosper as Main Street hurts.

So What Next?

The public health policy choice facing us is whether or not to replace a failing private financing system with public single-payer financing. Making the right choice is the only way to gain affordable universal coverage of necessary care for everyone. It is that simple. This is not an issue to be compromised away by politicians. We need a new structure to heal many of the problems of U.S. health care. We have an opportunity now to galvanize a grassroots movement for real health care reform that may not come again for a long time. The Democrats are poised to regain the Presidency in 2008, together with both houses of Congress. We need activist government and leaders, as we have had earlier in our history, to confront our health care crisis. It is a matter of moral, economic, and social urgency. As a nation, we are long overdue responding to Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to action, some forty years ago: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and most inhuman.”

John P. Geyman, MD is professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington. He is past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and author of The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Can the Public Interest Still Be Served?

UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS FOR A JUST ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

Healthcare For ALL --
It is immoral for a country as wealthy as ours to have 45 million people with no health coverage and tens of millions with inadequate coverage or excessive rates. It also makes no economic sense; despite spending twice as much as other industrialized nations on healthcare, our system performs poorly - because the private U.S. Insurance bureaucracy soaks up nearly one-third of all healthcare money in waste, profits, paperwork and advertising. Poor health and poor healthcare are drags on the economy and productivity; up to half of all personal bankrupticies are caused bu healthcare crises and the costs it has imposed.

UUJEC supports the Rep. John Conyers bill, H.R. 676, which establishes streamlined, nonprofit national health insurance - enhanced medicare for all - which would negotiate drug and treatment costs. By replacing private insurers and recouping administrative savings of up to $300 billion this year this single-payer approach would provide top of the line healthcare to all.

Watch Sicko and call your congressman in the morning

One message re: faith groups. (A letter to the editor of Healthcare-NOW.)

Since self-interest is a most important reason motivating one's vote, all churches, synagogues,

mosques, etc. will find that HR 676 is in their self-interest; it makes DEPENDENTS INTO SUPPORTERS OF

THE CHURCH. How? by relieving them of the financial burden of private health insurance ( or bankruptcy )

From using the resources of the church for their aid, these former dependents now have the the money to

donate to the church and FURTHER its mission!! Missions which are always short of funds. Even very conservative

churches whose members are usually encouraged to vote REPUBLICAN (many of whom

are now "on the fence" politically), will reconsider their voting direction to a congressperson or senator or presidential

candidate who supports a single payer solution to health care and what it can do for the church. Money raising is all

important to, for example the conservative tele-vangelists. Their political influence is enormous. Even a small number of "converts" would make a big difference to the cause of single payer. These groups can and should be contacted on this basis by email, telephone and mail. CONVERTING DEPENDENTS INTO SUPPORTERS ( FINANCIALLY) to help further the church's mission.

P.S. from Healthcare-NOW: Another way faith groups would benefit is that their staff, ministers, secretaries, organists, janitors, teachers, nuns, evangelists, national and judicatorial leadership --all staff and their families, would be covered for healthcare under the single payer guaranteed national healthcare system. Think about how many hundreds of millions of dollars that would save!

The Louisville Letter on Community Based Ecumenical and Interfaith Ministry.

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (USA) CALLS FOR SINGLE PAYER

HEALTH CARE AND COMMUNITY MINISTRY (II)

Resolution to Endorse HR 676

WHEREAS the General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and its predecessors have through the years called for reform of health delivery systems in the United States to make them accessible to the entire population.

WHEREAS the 1971 General Assembly of the UPUSA called for a national health insurance “single payer” plan with the following words:
We find that our society is giving highest priority to the production and consumption of goods and to profit-making and the defense of wealth to the neglect of basic human needs including health.
We believe that good health is of the nation’s most valuable resources, important not only to the well-being of individuals but also to the nation….We believe the general public has direct responsibilities in redesigning and developing a comprehensive, publicly-oriented national health policy.

Therefore, the General Assembly recommends: There be developed a national policy leading to a comprehensive system of health care which shall:
a. Be accountable to the general public.
b. Make all services and benefits available to all persons in the United States.
c. Be administered by a single national health agency with power to enforce standards to provide the highest quality health care possible.

The Delivery of Health Services

A. We believe that the value of persons requires that each person have full access to essential services without regard to ability to pay and on terms that enhance the dignity of the individuals….
B. We find our medical system to be preoccupied with disease and crisis care, which is costly in lives, social relationships, and money…
C. Therefore, the 183rd General Assembly (1971) recommends that:
i. Comprehensive health care for all persons include at least these elements: and in growth and development, nutrition, prevention of illness, periodic diagnostic evaluation, treatment of disease, extended and home nursing care, rehabilitation, long term care for chronic disorders, and the appropriate social and economic provisions to make these feasible in the life of a person and his household.

WHEREAS the negative conditions that resulted in the 1971 and subsequent General Assembly pronouncements have multiplied in recent years so that now almost 50 million persons are uninsured, another 50 million are underinsured, and still another 50 million are at risk to be uninsured because of the gradual collapse of employment-based insurance plans; while per capita annual health costs are higher than in any other country and yet the U.S. ranks only 13th amongst industrialized countries in quality of health care; while administrative costs are many times higher under managed care systems that in single payer systems such as the Medicare and Veterans Administration systems, while for the current per capita expenditure, the entire populace could be covered through a single payer system, including mental health and dental care without co-pays and deductibles.

WHEREAS we now have before the U.S. Congress a bill – HR 676 – that calls for single payer national health insurance and that embraces many of the principles set forth in our General Assembly pronouncements.

WHEREAS health care for the general population and for specific groups within the population as always been a concern of PHEWA and of all the PHEWA networks.

BE IT RESOLVED that:
PHEWA endorse HR 676, a single payer, “Medicare for all”, publicly funded, privately administered national health insurance program.

PHEWA work toward endorsement of HR 676 by the General Assembly of the PC(USA).
PHEWA encourage interfaith and ecumenical cooperation with the goal of obtaining passage of HR 676 by the congress and its signing by the President.

PHEWA send a copy of this resolution to Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), to the appropriate committee chairs of the U.S. Congress, and to the Stated Clerk, the Executive Director of the General Assembly Council , the Washington and United Nations offices, the Advisory Council on Social Witness Policy of the Presbyterian Church (USA)

Diverse Clergy Group

A clergy group supporting single payer healthcare on the West Coast represents congregations from multiple faiths. Members include Lutherans, Episcopalians, Jews and Methodists. Its broad base is the group's strength and its weakness, said Jim Nielsen, the group's initial organizer and retired director of common ministry at Washington State University who now worships at First Presbyterian Church in San Luis Obispo. On one hand, more voices means more power, Nielsen said. On the other, the religious leaders represent "very wide pews" of opinions and beliefs, so reaching consensus can be challenging. MORE

Jewish Magazine: Tikkun Covenant Favors Single Payer (from Tikkun -- published on May 17, 2006)
Editor: This is a part of the agenda by one of Tikkun, the Jewish magazine (and organization) that is helping to organize a national meeting of faith groups this weekend. more

A Spiritual Covenant with America A Jewish Magazine, an Interfaith Movement

Here is the Network of Spiritual Progressive's Spiritual Covenant with America {full version can be found in Rabbi Michael Lerner's The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (Harper, SanFrancisco, 2006), chapters 9-12.}
The Network of Spiritual Progressives

THE NEW BOTTOM LINE; THE CENTRAL GUIDE POST FOR A PROGRESSIVE SPIRITUAL POLITICS:

America needs a New Bottom Line, one which judges institutions, corporations, legislation, social practices, our health care system, our education system, our legal system, our social policies not only by how much money or power they generate, but also by how much love and compassion, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and by how much they nurture within us our capacity to respond to other human beings as embodiments of the sacred and to respond to the universe with gratitude, awe and wonder at the grandeur of all that is.

The Spiritual Covenant with America is one way to translate that New Bottom Line into policies for our society. The “we” is all those who will embrace this New Bottom Line.

CONTRAST: SINGLE PAYER AGENDA ( National Health Care plus transformation of how we understand health.)

We will seek a single payer national health care plan like that developed by Physicians for a National Health Program, and we also seek to broaden the understanding of health care to include all levels of what it is to be human. Our physical health cannot be divorced from environmental, social, spiritual, and psychological realities—and the entire medical system has to be reshaped in light of that understanding, focus on prevention, encourage alternative forms of health practice along with traditional Western forms, and insist that because human beings have many levels of reality, health care must reflect that rather than seek to reduce the human to the merely material.

CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA-- They seek gradual addition of benefits for different sectors of the population but leave the whole system in the hands of the profiteers, thus guaranteeing that their proposed changes will be undermined by the insurance companies and drug companies who raise their costs to make huge profits and thus make these reforms unreasonably costly. The single payer plan does not increase but decreases the total amount spent on health care by the U..S

Meanwhile, the plans put forward by many liberals are too limited and too unimaginative to generate the kind of mass support that would be needed to politically defeat the entrenched interests. (Editor's Note: Sometimes they are pressing for more government money to be spent to cover insurance company coverage for the uninsured while leaving the insurance company billions to be collected from us, the citizens suffering from haphazard and inferior quality healthcare coverage.) Moreover, they do not see the need for broadening our conception of what health care really should be about—the full spiritual-physical-psychological ntegration that makes human beings so special and complicated.

CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA--They continually place private profit over public need when it comes to health care. They think of health care as something that needs to be earned rather than as a sacred obligation. (Editor's Note: But, they are not even " fiscally conservative" because they call for continued support for the insurance and pharmaceutical interests spending hundreds of billions of dollars more than needed for a non-profituniversal healthcare system.)

TALKING POINTS WHEN MEETING WITH AN ELECTED OFFICIAL:

A. We support this program as an inevitable consequence of our spiritual and ethical commitments—our New Bottom Line is in part about treating other human beings as embodiments of the sacred.

" I've got a first opinion, and a second opinion, now I'm waiting for my insurer's opinion." By Barbara Smaller

United Methodist Policy

Support HR 676

U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 676 is the most comprehensive health care legislation up for consideration in the House today. It offers a mechanism that would make health care services available to everyone while at the same time reducing the enormous administrative costs of our current healthcare delivery system. Impressively, HR 676 has received the endorsement of 68 Representatives to date. However, that’s still barely 15% of the votes, and if you’ll recall legislative mathematics 101, you need 51% to win.

We are encouraging churches and other organizations to sponsor events in support of health care for all on or as close as possible to 6/7/06 June 7th, 2006.

This would be a good time for your church to conduct a Health Care Justice Sabbath. HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act (or, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act) is far-reaching because it includes the following provisions:

• Provides free health care for all persons residing in the US and US territories financed through the government, replacing today's multiplicity of health care payers with a single paying entity, and eliminating cost shifting.

• Includes all medically necessary care,

• Prohibits private insurers from selling health insurance coverage that duplicates benefits of HR 676

• Prohibits HMOs from rewarding physicians who discourage patients from seeking health care

• Finances health care for all through (1) paperwork reduction (2) rational bulk purchases of medicines (3) existing health care funding (4) increased income taxes on the top 5% of earners; (5) a modest payroll tax, and (6) a small tax on stock and bond transactions.

• Provides for retraining and job placement assistance for persons whose jobs are eliminated due to reduction of health administration requirements

• Establishes a National Board to ensure quality, access, and affordability

• Provides for eventual integration of Veterans and Indian Health Services into the program.

• Permits providers to focus on providing care rather than justifying to insurers the care they are providing.

Additional Resources on HR 676:

• Biblical, Moral, and Ethical Perspectives on Universal Health Care -- remarks by GBCS Consultant Jackson Day at Ecumenical Advocacy Days, March 2006

• Bulletin Insert -- The Good Samaritan and Health Care for All

AMERICAN BAPTIST RESOLUTION ON HEALTH CARE FOR ALL

Healing is a significant sign and metaphor of biblical faith. The prophets of the Old Testament and Jesus himself were healers. Physical well-being was valued for its own sake as well as a sign of hope for the day when everyone would share equally in the blessings of shalom.

Many of Jesus' miracles were miracles of healing. He touched and healed lepers, restored sight, caused the lame to walk and renewed the life of the woman who had suffered for years with a flow of blood. Christ's example (Mark 6:53-56) has inspired countless Christian health care workers including those serving as missionaries. Clearly, we have understood Jesus' concern for physical well-being as a commission to carry on that work of healing.

Today in the United States we have a health care system that is in crisis. Health care providers, health office workers, health support staff, insurers, and payers form a patchwork system without any coordination based on policy.

Health statistics tell an ugly story. At any given time about 35 million people in the U.S., one-seventh of the population, have no health care coverage. They are not covered by private insurance, employer-based insurance or government programs. Another 60 million people, including a large proportion of the elderly, do not have adequate coverage.

In the U.S. we pay more for health care than other industrialized nations and get less for our money. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates the total cost of health care in the U.S. in 1992 to exceed $800 billion, 13% of the gross national product. These dollars and percentages are rising daily.

Many people do not have health insurance and therefore go without basic health care. They see physicians less often and die younger than those with insurance. Even people with apparently good health insurance coverage have hidden vulnerabilities when faced with paying for expensive medical conditions. Catastrophic accidents or chronic long-term needs can bankrupt a family.

Efforts at shifting costs among government agencies, private insurers, and individual payers drain enormous amounts of energy and attention, and create enormous additional bureaucratic and regulatory costs beyond the costs for the health care itself.

Powerful forces seek to preserve the status quo, but we as American Baptists, like many other citizens and public officials, believe that the time has come for significant change.

Three general approaches dominate the national debate on universal access to health care. One would merely seek to reform current health insurance programs. The second is an aggregate of proposals under the umbrella term, "managed competition." The third, the "single-payer" approach, is a publicly financed system based on taxes with benefits paid by the government and with services delivered by the government and with services provided by a mix of private and public providers, as Canada does. All have negatives as well as benefits.

In accordance with our 1975 Policy Statement on Health Care, we believe that health care should be viewed as a right, not a privilege, and that the basic goal for health care reform should be universal access to comprehensive benefits.

Therefore, as American Baptists, we urge the President and Congress to work together expeditiously to enact a major program of health care reform which will extend health care coverage to every person in the United States.

We seek a national health care system that:

serves everyone in the United States
provides comprehensive access, care, and services
is sensitive to the needs and rights of health workers, patients, and their cultures
promotes health awareness, disease prevention, nutrition, fitness, and safety
slows the upward spiral of costs
draws financial support from the broad base of the entire nation
reduces unnecessary administrative costs
reduces inappropriate medical procedures

Adopted by the General Board of the American Baptist Churches - June 1992

167 For, 0 Against, 4 Abstentions
Modified by the Executive Committee of the General Board - June 1993
Modified by the Executive Committee of the General Board - September 1994
Modified by the Executive Committee of the General Board - September 1998
(General Board Reference # - 8193:11/91)

Policy Base

Policy Statement on Health, Healing and Wholeness

advocate for the availability of, access to, and funding for quality health care for all persons; and

advocate for availability of, access to, and funding for quality health care for all persons; and

advocate for legislative health care measures.

American Baptist Policy Statement on Health Care

As American Baptists we affirm and support programs, legislation, research and other formulations which help develop a new comprehensive health care delivery system which provides quality services for all people.

1. Make health care resources, private and public, available in keeping with the total needs of people, rather than on the basis of economic, geographic or racial factors;

3. Provide equitable health care for all residents of the U.S.A. by eliminating financial barriers



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