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Activism kind of creeps up on us, doesn't it? One thing leads to another. What kind of response have you gotten to that article you wrote back in September, Jim?
For some reason the article hit a nerve. I received emails from all over the world. People who lived in countries with a public option sang its praises. Many people from the U.S. sent horror stories of denied coverage and sunsequent bankrupcy. The stories were heartbreaking. One woman wrote saying she had not been able to afford preventative medicine, but was now receiving very expensive treatment at the public expense for a terminal disease. She said she would not live long enough to see how the vote turned out. It's hard to give up on universal health care after you hear stories like that.
Many progressives find themselves on the fence regarding the health care legislation, especially after the President weighed in, taking on more of the Republican ideas. A case in point: the guests on this Friday night's Bill Moyers' Journal will be Dr. Marcia Angell, Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Wendell Potter, former health insurance whistleblower will discuss the current legislation. Dr. Angell will argue that Congress should dump what we have and just wait for the current system to collapse under its own weight. Only then, will we be able to adopt a single-payer system. Mr. Potter will argue as bad as the legislation is, we can't afford to wait. However imperfect, the existing legislation will cover many who are currently uninsured. Where do you fall in this conversation?
I generally take a two-tier approach to such issues. We need to choose the lesser of evils in the short run, but work for a more radical solution in the long run. I can't imagine allowing the kind of suffering that would follow from letting the system implode, but I also can't see pretending that our representatives are much more than corporate lobbyists who have very little incentive to really change the system.
If you will excuse the term, I think our nation's problem is spiritual. To me, the word "spiritual" refers not to belief in a certain God, but to our ultimate value for living. I believe the official religion in the United States is not Christianity, but capitalism. The Bible condemns loaning money at interest. Our nation has made such usury a sacrament. Most Americans really believe that an "invisible hand" balances the market (to use the famous words of Adam Smith). When modern people say we should trust the system or that the pendulum always swings back to the middle, they might as well be worshiping a stone God. To think the rich will treat our children any better than they treat their sweatshop wage slaves is to lay them on the cold stone of some future sacrifice.
So I believe, in the short run, we should choose between the smaller of the two cannibals who are devouring us, but our ultimate hope comes from a finding the courage to stop playing the shell game of traditional politics and to take our world back from the rich and share it with fairly with all the earth's people. It may sound naive, but any alternative is suicide.
Thanks so much for speaking with me, Jim. Let's do this again soon.
Rev. Jim Rigby is the pastor at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Austin: their website is staopen.com
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