Health Care for Everyone

My prayer for today is for all the people in the United States who are uninsured for health care, or pay way too much for insurance, or who are at risk of losing their health insurance or who are fighting with insurance companies to get the care they need covered. I suspect this is a large number of people.

A blog I follow had a recent post consisting of several quotes from a writer named Holly Sklar. Here's a sample:

Lack of health insurance kills 45,000 American adults a year, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health. One out of three Americans under age 65 had no private or public health insurance for some or all of 2007-2008.

You can't go the emergency room for the screening that will catch cancer or heart disease early, or ongoing treatment to manage chronic kidney disease or asthma. And even emergency care is different for the insured and uninsured. Studies show uninsured car crash victims receive less care in the hospital, for example.

Even with health insurance, many Americans are a medical crisis away from bankruptcy. Research shows 62 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical, a share up 50 percent since 2001. Most of the medically bankrupt had health insurance - the kind insuring profits, not health care.

It's from an article called Medicare for All: Yes We Can by Holly Sklar.

I'm sad that people are so burdened, frightened, frustrated, and anxious about something that is a right, taken care of, in every other industrialized nation. I pray that the lawmakers in Congress will make wise and compassionate decisions about this issue.