"Our Traditions Demand Better" on Health Care
This morning, I accompanied our director, Rabbi David Saperstein, to Capitol Hill, where he was one of five speakers at a press conference in support of the swift passage of a health insurance reform bill that ensures quality, affordable health care to all Americans. Other speakers were Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), James Winkler, General Secretary of the United Methodist Church, and Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. Half a dozen more faith leaders joined them on stage to express their support, too.
David's words spoke clearly to the urgency of our nation's health care crisis - as did the remarks of all the speakers. As Sen. Cardin said, "We are fortunate to live in the wealthiest nation in the world that has been a beacon of hope and human rights for millions. Our objective in health care reform is to bring down escalating costs; provide affordable, quality health care for every American; and to do so in a fiscally responsible way. But America is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide health care to its citizens. The leader of the free world should provide universal health coverage to every American. This is a moral imperative and that's what this bill does,"
The full text of David's remarks are after the jump and this photo of this morning's event:
Providing quality, universal health care as a core societal obligation is a 2,000-year old command in the Jewish tradition. It speaks across millennia to us today. Consider the words of the Jewish tradition on health care:
Indeed the very word shalom comes from the root l'shalem - to make whole, to heal.
- "Whoever is in pain, lead him to the physician." (Baba Kamma 46B)
- "It is obligatory from the Torah for the physician to heal the sick [and this is included in the explanation of the phrase and you shall restore it to him, meaning to heal the body]." (Moses Maimonides)
- "[God created food and water; we must use them in starving off hunger and thirst.] God created drugs and compounds and gave us the intelligence necessary to discover their medicinal properties; we must use them in warding off illness and disease." (Moses Maimonides)
- "No disciple of the wise may live in a city that is not provided with the following ten officials and institutions: [the first two being] a physician and a surgeon, [a bath-house, a lavatory, a source of water supply such as a stream or a spring, a synagogue, a school teacher, a scribe, a treasurer of charity funds for the poor, a court that has authority to punish with stripes and imprisonment]. (Moses Maimonides)
- "Our Rabbis taught: the non-Jewish poor are to be sustained along with the Jewish poor, the non-Jewish sick are to be visited along with the Jewish sick, ....for the sake of [the ways of] peace." (Gittin 61a)
The views of the organizations here represent a broad consensus in the mainstream religious communities. People of faith have always understood our responsibilities to include the obligation to bring health to all, and healing to the sick and infirm. It is in that spirit that today, I stand here with my distinguished Christian colleagues, with optimism and determination, that we are on the cusp of fundamentally changing the way that Americans ensure health care to all.
To those who would say that religion has no place in the health care reform debate, that this has become too much a partisan political issue, we insist that this is a quintessentially religious issue. The health care crisis touches nearly every citizen, every community, every church, mosque, temple and synagogue; every member of the clergy and every congregant. The failure to provide universal health care coverage challenges the simplest and clearest biblical command expressed by Ezekiel, that "Every living thing shall be healed." It is these values and these concerns that bring the religious community here to say: America deserves better than the reality.
What is the reality? "We live in a country with a pitifully inadequate health insurance system that causes horrors every day so tragic that they could rip the heart out of a stone.... The time has long since passed when our leaders should have done what every other advanced country has somehow managed to do: provide all its citizens with essential health care." With these words, we called on all our synagogues to join the struggle to pass universal, affordable, accessible and portable health care reform. And the moral test of health care reform is whether it provides accessible, affordable, quality health insurance for all, including our country's low- income seniors, children, disabled and immigrants. These are the people most at risk of falling through the cracks, and these are the people who rely on us to ensure that they can find decent health care when they need it. All Americans, wealthy and poor, children, the elderly, and yes, women, deserve care that meets all their needs - including reproductive health needs - and keeps them healthy throughout their lives.
Yes, America deserves better than the reality.
For the 10 million uninsured children, we say: America deserves better! For the millions of disabled whose health care is threatened, we say: America deserves better! For the over 80 million who at some point this year will lose health insurance, we say: America deserves better! For those millions of hard working Americans who have lost jobs and with them their health benefits, we say: America deserves better! For all of those tens of millions of Americans who fear that they may lose their access to comprehensive coverage, and whose life savings are threatened by catastrophic illness, we say: America deserves better! For the soul of our nation, we say: America deserves better.
Our traditions demand better. Our nation seeks better. God's children deserve better. This Congress can do better. Dr. King's call of the fierce urgency of now should animate the decisions each senator will make in ensuring universal health coverage. We pray and advocate that they will do better - for all Americans and for our nation's future.