IN MINNESOTA, Alec Smith was unable to afford either health insurance premiums or the insulin needed to treat his Type 1 diabetes, despite working full time. He died last year from diabetic ketoacidosis, at age 26. Other young Americans with diabetes have suffered the same fate.
David Bridges of Indiana has health insurance through his job, but a high deductible means he has to pay for his multiple prescriptions out of pocket. One of those prescriptions alone costs $700 a month. He maxes out credit cards to buy what medicine he can, yet still has to skip doses.
These stories represent the status quo of U.S. health care, even with the preservation of the Affordable Care Act. In responding to such gaps, the faith community has traditionally turned to the direct provision of charity health care, a generous hallmark of our traditions for generations. But we cannot stop there.
Front-line charity health-care providers are the first to acknowledge the truth in the words of peace and civil rights activist William Sloane Coffin. “Human nature, as every Bible reader knows, is sinful, and therefore the virtue of the few will never compensate for the inertia of the many,” Coffin said. “Charity, yes always; but never as a substitute for justice.”
When it comes to health care, there is no question about how we define justice. All major religious traditions embrace a clear responsibility to provide for the poor and the sick. Early church writers often referred to Jesus as the “Great Physician,” and there are dozens of New Testament references to Jesus healing the sick. His healing acts honored the multiple Hebrew scripture demands to provide care, including calls to action such as “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:11, see also Proverbs 31:9, Isaiah 1:17). The Islamic mandate to care for the struggling poor led to history’s first structured charity hospitals. Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian traditions dating back to 400 B.C.E. show that similar treatment was provided.
That legacy provides us with an important lesson: When it comes to health care, we are compelled to pursue a communal solution. Government acting in our names protects our other human rights through law enforcement, emergency services, judicial systems, and infrastructure. So too must government provide the foundation of a morally defensible health-care system.
Our health-care system needs to step away from treating health care as a commodity ripe for sale at the highest possible prices. Health care is a bad match for the market-oriented approach. “Consumers” are often ill, desperate, and unable to comparison shop or walk away from the “transaction.” Even some economic conservatives, who champion the power of markets in other settings, admit those same markets do not work well for health care.
Nearly every other nation that possesses resources similar to the U.S. guarantees universal health coverage, which includes improved access to care and financial protection. Those nations have committed to health as a human right. Many have embraced the right in their constitution, and all have signed the U.N.’s International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which recognizes “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”
The U.S. is not yet a party to that treaty. But we are a nation of people deeply respectful of faith traditions, and those traditions are unequivocal in their insistence that health care is a human right. We must reaffirm that commitment now in our congregations, our communities, and in the government that represents us.
Sister Simone Campbell, SSS, is the Executive Director of NETWORK and an Auburn Senior Fellow.
Fran Quigley directs the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law and is active in the Religion and Socialism working group of the Democratic Socialists of America.
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