Health Care

Beau Underwood 6-28-2012
Ivone Guillen / Sojourners

Ivone Guillen / Sojourners

In a widely anticipated and extremely consequential decision, the Supreme Court ruled today in a 5-4 decision that President Barack Obama’s chief domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act, is constitutional.

The main challenge to the law had focused on the “individual mandate,” which required people to purchase insurance or pay a fine. In its ruling, the Court upheld the mandate under the taxing power given to Congress in the Constitution.

Debra Dean Murphy 6-27-2012

“The spirit that enables one person to overleap the boundary of the body in knowledge and love and to incorporate the other in the self is matched by the same spirit in the other.”
~ Luke Timothy Johnson, Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel

“He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’”   
~ Mark 5:34

After several days of renewed public debate about health care, we hear this weekend the familiar healing stories from Mark chapter 5. By Sunday we will know the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding challenges to the Affordable Care Act. So politically charged is this discussion, so designed is it to distort, divide, undermine, and confuse, it’s easy to forget that the issue, at its core, is a simple one: how ought a humane society tend to its suffering ones and aim for the well-being of all?

We will also hear this passage on a day when many will be anticipating the Fourth of July, and perhaps expecting their Sunday worship to kickstart the holiday’s celebration. In hearing the text from Mark, such worshipers might well wonder: What does Jesus’ encounters with a desperate, suffering woman and a young girl believed to be dead have to do with America’s love of freedom and fireworks?

Joshua Witchger 6-19-2012

With the SCOTUS ruling on the future of U.S. health care still pending, filmmaker Peter Nicks provides an inside look at one American hospital struggling to care for its uninsured patients. In this New York Times Op-Doc (opinion documentary), Nicks shows the reality for many hospitals in the country in low-income areas. It is estimated that facilities like the one profiled, receive over 16 million emergency room visits a year from low-income or uninsured patients.

QR Blog Editor 6-18-2012

CNN examines some of the possible outcomes of the Supreme Court's imminent decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act:

"The election-year rulings will not only guide how every American receives medical care but will also establish precedent-setting boundaries for how government regulation can affect a range of social areas. Your health and your finances could be on the line.

The outcome's possibilities are myriad: a narrow or sweeping decision? A road map to congressional authority in coming decades? Which bloc of justices, which legal argument will win the day?"
 
Read more here
LaVonne Neff 5-04-2012
Cost of Medicare photo, aceshot1 / Shutterstock.com

Cost of Medicare photo, aceshot1 / Shutterstock.com

We'll be hearing a lot about Medicare between now and November. President Barack Obama wants to tweak it. Mitt Romney wants to reinvent it. Everyone who wants to get elected, however, agrees on one thing: nothing will change for the current crop of seniors and soon-to-be seniors.

Whew. Six months and Mr. Neff will be home free! Less than a year and a half and we'll both have free health care! And then we can afford to retire, right?

Wrong.

Joshua Witchger 1-19-2012
Growers First coffee farmer, Rito Sierra with his wife, Maria, and four of their

Growers First coffee farmer, Rito Sierra with his wife, Maria, and four of their five children.

Fight global poverty, invest in agriculture. ~ Growers First

As the winter winds bite at our collars, a hot cup of coffee is a perfect antidote for healing.  But what you might not consider when you sip a mug of dark roast is the economic injustices that many coffee growers around the world face.   

Coffee is one of the largest cash crops in the world – the U.S.D.A. Foreign Agricultural Service reports that last year 15,689,340,000 pounds of coffee were distributed worldwide. Yet, indigenous coffee growers see only a tiny fraction of its revenue. 

These are some of the reasons why fair exchange programs such as  Growers First  got into the coffee business — to tip the scales of economic and social inequity that has become a way of life for many coffee farmers globally in a more just direction.

Even more importantly, Growers First exists to transform lives. The non-profit based in Laguna Beach, Calif., has a powerful story of action, conflict, struggle — and ultimately hope.

Duane Shank 12-16-2011
U.S. troops head to Iraq, 2006. Image via Wiki Commons http://bit.ly/w1FpAB

U.S. soldiers board a flight to Iraq in Kuwait, Oct. 2006. Image via Wiki Commons http://bit.ly/w1FpAB

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said about the war in Vietnam, “Some are guilty, all are responsible.” It is a good reminder of our responsibilities now that the war in Iraq has officially been declared ended.

First, we as a society are responsible for the necessary care for our returned veterans. A total of 1.5 million American men and women served in the armed forces in Iraq.  Nearly 35,000 suffered physical injuries, as many as 360,000 may have brain injuries, and as many as 25 percent have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Suicides and divorces are rising, homelessness and unemployment are high.

Having sent them to war, our society now needs to assume the responsibility for providing what they and their families need. As Abraham Lincoln reminded the country in his second inaugural speech, as the Civil War was ending in March 1865, one of the unfinished tasks was “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan …”  

We must advocate for and ensure that in the budget and deficit cutting battles to come, the necessary funding for veterans care and benefits are maintained. It’s a moral obligation.

Jack Palmer 12-16-2011

Nikki Haley Endorses Mitt Romney For President; Lawmakers Agree on Spending Bill, Avoid Shutdown; Omaha Tri-Faith Initiative Has Unique Approach To Interfaith Relations; Christopher Hitchens Has Died; Did Bachmann Just Save Romney?; Wikileak suspect wants recusal; Health Care Experts Warn That Wyden/Rayn Plan Will End Guaranteed Access To Care For Seniors; New Evangelicals, Old News.

Jack Palmer 12-06-2011

From Judgment To Hope (OPINION); Obama Administration To Consider Gay Rights When Allocating Foreign Aid: Source; Coming Soon To The Southwest: The Age Of Thirst; Iowa Republicans Side With Newt Gingrich Over Mitt Romney On Immigration; Occupy Wall Street Protesters To Occupy Foreclosed Homes The Amazing Rise Of Anna Hazare, India's Gandhi-Like Protest Leader; Arnold Schwarzenegger Urges Candidates To Champion Green Energy; The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah!

Onleilove Alston 11-08-2011

The New York City Human Circle will be replicated throughout across the nation, when faith leaders host Human Circles as members of the Sojourners National Mobilizing Circle, which is bringing together faith and community leaders to organize faith-rooted actions in their communities.

The purpose of these circles is not only to lobby for the poor but also with them.

Danny Duncan Collum 11-01-2011

Why are we still sinking in health-care induced debt?

the Web Editors 10-24-2011

Vatican Meets OWS: 'The Economy Needs Ethics'; Lack Of Jobs Leaves More Suburban, Middle Class Sliding Into Poverty; Rick Perry Challenges Opponents' Abortion Stances At Iowa Faith & Freedom Dinner; Rick Perry Talks Iraq And His 'Love Affair' With Guns; Ask Candidates For Office About Poverty; Bachmann Gives 'Faith Testimony' At An Iowa Church; Evangelical Voters Hold Sway In Iowa

Cathleen Falsani 10-11-2011

Last week, Sojourners CEO, the Rev. Jim Wallis, visited with #OccupyWallStreet demonstrators in New York City. "As I listen to them, I recognize what I felt as a young student-activist in the late '60s and early '70s," Wallis said. "I just feel from them what I felt a long time ago, that we're part of something much bigger than us, much larger than us...The visceral feeling [here] is, 'This could really change things.'"

the Web Editors 10-04-2011

ev churchWhat are "the evangelicals," you ask?

Certainly not a political or ideological monolith, as recent polling and survey numbers demonstrate.

Here is a compilation of some recent statistics related to evangelicals and their political, spiritual and ideological habits.

Kal Penn 9-29-2011
[caption id="attachment_34241" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Kal Penn speaks at a Democratic rally at University of Southern California, October 2010.
the Web Editors 9-22-2011

When President Barack Obama laid out his deficit plan Monday, he wasn't just trying to sell a policy. When he pressed for tax hikes on the rich and announced, "This is not class warfare," he was trying to exorcise a demon that has bedeviled the Democratic Party for decades and in the process deprive the Republicans of one of their trustiest weapons. The reaction from the right was swift and sure: "Class warfare!"

Richard Kirsch 9-01-2011

Will we control high U.S. health-care costs, or just shift them to seniors?

Jim LoBianco 8-19-2011

When it comes to homeless youth the facts are simple, services in the City of Chicago are falling far behind the need. A survey of Chicago public school students from 2009/10 revealed 3,682 children who identified as being homeless and in need of shelter. In contrast there are approximately 189 beds for homeless youth (ages 18-25) funded by the City of Chicago. In 2010, 4,775 homeless youth were turned away from youth shelters for lack of room. To be clear, that was 4,775 instances where homeless youth sought shelter and were unable to find it. To date there are only 10 percent of the beds needed to provide safe shelter and supportive programs for the estimated number of Chicago's homeless youth.

Gerard Anderson on Overpaying, Overeating, and Out-of-Control U.S. Medical Costs

Alan Storey 6-13-2011
For the Healing of the Nation

For the Healing of the Nation

Mark's gospel tells us that healing, like suffering, should unite us. A Bible study for the health-care debate.