What If?

In the latest issue of The Christian Century I read a review of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T. R. Reid. Published in August of this year, the book documents the experiences of the author, a writer for the Washington Post, as he looks at the health care systems in this and other countries and searches for healing for a shoulder that is giving him trouble.

What drew my attention was this question, "What if we were to approach health care as a right, not a commodity?" Good question. As so many other countries have shown us, it is quite possible to look at health care as a right, not break the nation's bank, and have good health care. If we were to look at health care as a right in our country we would have to confront some American myths about ourselves, about our class structures, and about the power of major corporations.

I refer back to an earlier post. The nations of the world stated in 1948 in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that health care is a right. May this come to pass in actuality. AMEN.