It's Personal

I have been having a discussion of the current healthcare debate with some friends on Facebook, usually a good, calm discussion, though we may disagree. For me this issue has become intensely personal. How many of you know that your health insurance, should you have it, most likely has a lifetime limit on the amount that will be spent on you? If it is like mine, it has a limit that seems astronomical, one million dollars. You'll never use all that, so the limit seems irrelevant. Irrelevant until you come down with a catastrophic disease, like cancer. An incurable, but treatable cancer. You go into treatment and discover that one million dollars isn't very much money at all. I will, should I live a few more years, quite probably surpass that limit. What happens then? No insurance company in their right mind will sell me insurance at any price. I will be too young for Medicare, and ineligible for Medicaid. Where will I go? There must be an option available for people like me. Short of a single payer system (please God)a public option is the only choice. Or perhaps I should simply follow the advice of Ebeneezer Scrooge and "die and decrease the surplus population." I will say that I have like many other cancer patients decided that I will forgo treatment before I put my family into bankruptcy. In the wealthiest nation on earth this is not a choice anyone should have to make. It is not a problem now, we can pay the bills, but who knows? Join me in praying for a solution to this dilemma, not for me, but for those facing that choice now. If our faith in Christ means anything, we must use that faith to bring about good, to influence our society to do what is just. Faith must inform our whole life. Ours is a communal faith. In Genesis Cain asks God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Much of the rest of Scripture is an answer to that question.
The answer is YES.
Deacon John
The Memorial of the Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist
Aug. 29, 2009
St. Peregrine, pray for us.
Blessed John XXIII,pray for us.