Healing healthcare

-

In the gospel reading for next Sunday (Luke 13:10-17), Jesus heals a woman who has been crippled for eighteen years. In biblical numerology, the number eighteen symbolizes bondage. The number eighteen also connotes a long time.

Pursuing the list of the world’s largest corporations by global revenue, I was surprised to discover that four of the ten largest U.S. corporations are healthcare focused: UnitedHealth Group, McKesson, CVS Health and AmerisourceBergen. Altogether, seven of the world’s one hundred largest corporations are in the U.S. healthcare industry (pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, health insurance, etc.). No healthcare focused corporation based in another nation made the list of the one hundred largest corporations.[1]

The list puts the size and economic power of the U.S. healthcare industry into perspective. No wonder the U.S. has the world’s most expensive healthcare and only mediocre results as measured by patient outcomes.

Persons who live in the U.S. are crippled, in bondage, to a healthcare system broadly focused on profits and not individual or social well-being. We need to heal our healthcare system now. Realistically, change generally occurs incrementally. Proposals to dramatically change the healthcare system in the U.S. are almost certainly dead on arrival. Realistic, incremental steps potentially include gradually building on the Affordable Care Act, increasing access to Medicaid and lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare.

Observers criticized Jesus for healing the woman on the Sabbath. Proponents of moving away from a market driven healthcare system are similarly criticized for abandoning capitalism in favor of socialism. Yet sick people and their loved ones, presuming that they can obtain the requisite pricing data and appropriate medical knowledge in a timely manner, are rarely in an emotional condition to make the informed, rational choices that capitalism theoretically requires. Consequently, what advocates of the status quo defend as capitalism is actually an oligopolistic system in which suppliers and providers dictate non-competitive prices and often decide treatment protocols based upon the provider’s bottom line rather than the patient’s well-being.


[1] “The Global 500,” Fortune, August 2019, F1.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A starting point for theology

-
Theology used to be known as the queen of the sciences.Theology was dethroned several centuries ago because of the growing recognition of the scientific method’s inapplicability to theology.
In general, theologians have begun their work from one of two starting points, either implicitly or explicitly.
One of those starting points was God.Theologians working from this starting point presumed that humans could directly apprehend God.For example, the classical arguments for the existence of God – the ontological, cosmological, and so forth – all rest on this presumption.
This starting point requires assuming that humans are able to know God.Consequently, some religious traditions posit that humans have a soul that is similar in nature to God.The Roman Catholic Church, for example, teaches that at conception a human receives an immortal soul.Many other traditions have similar teachings about humans having an immortal or eternal soul.Since the soul is immortal, there is no physical eviden…
Read more

Jesus, Lamb of God

-
The image of Jesus as the Lamb of God pervades Christianity. The lamb is a familiar symbol for Jesus, found not only in today's gospel[1] but also throughout the New Testament as well as in art and literature. The image of Jesus as the Lamb of God reinterprets the Jewish Passover narrative, which describes the angel of death in Egypt passing over Israelite houses marked with the blood of a lamb, killing only the Egyptian first born. Thus, we have the Agnus Dei, “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us,”[2] a part of Christian liturgies since the early fourth century.[3]

Biblical images and metaphors are often complex and confusing. For example, Biblical authors describe Christians as God's sheep, although they sometimes refer to Jews as sheep, even in the New Testament.[4] New Testament authors similarly describe Jesus as both the Lamb of God and the shepherd, two conflicting images actually found in a single verse in the Revelation of John.[5]…
Read more