When my children were young we faced some difficult medical challenges. I don’t know what we would have done when my youngest and most expensive child was born, if we had not had excellent insurance. Because how do you pay off bills that are many times over your annual income?
My daughter works with a population that is just learning their health care coverage is being cut off. She tells me it is the people who cry that get to her the most. Living in a state that recently reduced eligibility of their state run health care program from 133 percent of poverty down to 100 percent, while also rejecting the Medicaid expansion of the Affordable Health Care has left many uninsured. What could have been an easy transition for these families of the working poor, has become a nightmare instead while they find themselves in the middle of our public debate about health care. Worse still is the gap created when a portion of the Affordable Health Care law was struck down by the Supreme Court. No longer able to qualify for one type of health care coverage, they are unable to even apply for the health exchanges which were written with the expectation they would be covered by Medicaid.
Today people are trapped in that gap in half of our states. Fixing the disparity across our nation ought to be a priority we could all agree on. Basic human kindness and human decency, to say nothing of a God who insists we are to care for those who live on the underside of wealth, demands a compassionate response. I think the prophet Amos would have a word for us even as he cautioned his nation to, “ Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” (Amos 5:24) I wonder when we will have courage enough to let go of our political talking points and being to work together for justice. I pray that it comes soon.