Today, Dr. Frederick Schmidt posted on his blog here about doing ministry with the poor, on of the four areas of focus of the United Methodist Church mandated by the 2008 General Conference (just a meandering thought: will all those change with the 2012 General Conference–just when I’m starting to figure this out?).
Anyway, I thought Schmidt made a particularly insightful comment when he wrote, “I have no way of “knowing” in the sense that really matters. No one who works on a computer, went to college, pursued graduate work, and writes online knows a thing about what it means to be poor.”
I’d like to add to that, “Anyone who has decent health insurance also doesn’t know a thing about being poor.”
In the last year, I’ve hit, for the first time in my life, several what I am calling “health hiccups.” Thanks to my handy-dandy insurance card, which my church pays dearly for, I’m able to make the rounds of physicians and expensive tests, bearing a relatively small (but still painful!)l percentage of the cost by my deductibles and co-pays. If I didn’t have insurance, there is no way I would be getting any health care, and certainly not the quality that has been available to me.
This, perhaps more than anything else, is the great divide today between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Access to a basic human need: basic, skilled, compassionate aid when something goes wrong with our quite fallible human bodies.
I do have days when I wonder if the health care system in the United States is broken beyond repair.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In