Comments from Rabbi Beifield:
Two central ideas underlie the abiding Jewish commitment to provide health care to all of God’s children. The first is Judaism’s teaching that an individual human life is of infinite value and that the preservation of life supersedes almost all other considerations. The second is the belief that God has endowed us with the understanding and ability to become partners with God
in making a better world. The use of that wisdom to cure illnesses has been a central theme in Jewish thought and history.
Three health care obligations flow from these core values:
I. First, physicians have an obligation to heal. So honored a profession was that of physician that during the Middle Ages as many as half of the best known rabbinic authors and scholars were also physicians.
2. Second, patients have an obligation to obtain health care. Our bodies and souls belong to God, and we have to ensure that they are cared for. The verse in Deuteronomy (4:15) “You shall indeed guard your souls,” has traditionally been interpreted as commanding us to protect our health. Furthermore the ancient rabbis concluded that Jews should live in cities where doctors live in order to have access to health care.
3. Third, providing health care was not just an obligation for the patient and the doctor, but for society as well. It is for this reason that health care is listed first by Maimonides, a revered Jewish scholar, on his list of the ten most important communal services that had to be offered by a city to its residents. (Mishneh Torah, Sefer Hamadda IV:23). During the long history of the self-governing Jewish community, almost all such communities set up societies to ensure that all their citizens had access to health care. Doctors were required to reduce their rates for poor patients and, where that was not sufficient, communal subsidies were established (Shulchan Aruch, Y oreh Deah 249: 16; Responsa Ramat Rahel of Rabbi Eliezer Waldernberg sections 24-25).
From these themes, we must conclude that when members of society-at-large are ill, our responsibility – not only of the medical profession but of all of us – expands to ensure that medical resources are available at an affordable cost to those who need them. This principle is embodied in the concept of tikkun olam – what we are obligated to do in order to repair the world in which we find ourselves.
One Biblical word stands for three concepts. The Hebrew word “tzedek” speaks of social justice, charity and righteousness. Thus the personal, the philanthropic and the social are inextricably linked in the Biblical tradition. The ultimate meaning of “tzedek” is not to be determined by how those of affluence or influence fare, but by how the least among us, the widow, the orphan, the elderly and the poor manage in our society.
Providing greater access to medical care through the expansion of Medicaid in Virginia is a sensible and essential step in realizing those values upon which our society stands.
-Rabbi Martin P. Beifield Jr. of Congregation Beth Ahabah in downtown Richmond
Statement from Dr. Damaj:
I am here with my brothers and sisters of various religious traditions standing in support of Medicaid expansion. We are here to appeal to our legislators to open their hearts to the need and the care of the citizen of our beloved commonwealth.
The Islamic health care ministry is rooted in a commitment to promote human dignity for all people, and access to health care is a human basic right.
The Quranic mandate to care for the poor requires us to express this in concrete action at all levels. In fact, the demands for upholding justice and defending the oppressed and underprivileged of the society can be found in so many places in the Islamic traditions.
We should ask ourselves: How is it, then living in this great and blessed commonwealth, that in the midst of all this greatness we are giving unwitting consensus to allowing more and more of our fellow citizens, to fall into vulnerability, Isn’t that immoral? Why isn’t lack of medical care immoral?
We all have a responsibility – wherever we live – to build our communities and contribute to their stability and success.
There’s no mistaking that Virginia is ready for change. A majority of Virginians wants social cohesion and common ground based on compassion and care for others. We pray that our leaders will have the political will to address this urgent moral issue, because indeed budgets are moral documents.
I will end with one verse of the Quran: “It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards East or West; but it is righteousness to believe in God and the Last Day and the Angels and the Book and the Messengers; to spend of your substance out of love for Him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask; and for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayers and practice regular charity; … Such are the people of truth, the God fearing” (Quran 2: 177).
-Dr. Imad Damaj, Virginia Muslim Coalition for Public Affairs.
Comments from Rev. Burke:
The Baptist General Convention of Virginia and its Social Justice Commission and Health Ministry stand with the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, Virginia Consumer Voices for Healthcare and all others in this group of supporters to encourage legislators to close the coverage gap.
We signed this letter to the legislators as an expression of our foundational belief that we must provide for those in need of care whenever it is in our power to do so. I say to our legislators, that it is in your power to relieve the distress and suffering of many families by closing the Medicaid coverage gap. Medicaid expansion provides an opportunity for the Commonwealth to bring much needed medical care to thousands of our citizens. To deny expansion reflects a lack of care and concern for the most vulnerable persons in Virginia.
-The Rev. Dr. Eli Burke, Baptist General Convention
Comments from Mr. Caruso:
Healthcare is valuable because life itself is valuable – all life, every life:
Born and unborn
Rich and poor
Native-born and immigrant
Insured and uninsured
Incarcerated and not incarcerated
At the beginning of life, the end of life, and everywhere in between.
Our firm conviction is that healthcare should cover everyone and protect everyone, born and unborn.
We call on the General Assembly and the Governor to apply these principles to the state budget by closing the healthcare coverage gap and by restricting government funding of abortion to the greatest extent possible.
We also call for approval of the increased funding Governor McAuliffe proposed in his introduced budget for the “Health Wagon,” which provides a critical health safety net to many of the poorest residents of Southwest Virginia.
As a Commonwealth, let’s come together to cover everyone and protect everyone. It’s what life is all about.
-Jeff Caruso, Executive Director, Virginia Catholic Conference
Comments from Rev. Swadley:
Today, I am speaking about access to healthcare as a pastor, having served a diversity of churches for 36 years, as a father whose daughter has been burdened with the anxiety that she might not have healthcare insurance when she turns 26 and will no longer be on her parents’ health insurance plan, and I am speaking as a pastor and neighbor active in my community, who has seen the tragedy of the members under my spiritual leadership who have struggled to make ends meet, making hard decisions that often left them bereft of the most important protections of the daily life for medicine and medical care.
My experience is not with crunching numbers to convince the legislators or the governor of the need for universal access to quality healthcare coverage. The numbers are there; but they may seem impersonal just to quote them. The dollars are there to support the coverage; but too often we play the numbers game and trade politics and human lives in some sort of strange game of ideology and political tradeoffs, while the poor watch the game played out at a distance unable to speak.
I cannot look at my daughter that way. She is a person, even though she could become a statistic. She does not know all these politics and jockeying for position to get votes at the expense of her life. I cannot look at one of my dear friends in the church who lost her husband from a stroke and a heart attack, having struggled through hard times with no insurance. They had to depend on charity of a free clinic when it was available to them. They had to weigh the burden of what they could pay the hospital, who cared for the father and husband and what choices to make about other necessities to balance for their four children. This was sheer hell. No one should have to be compelled to this type of undignified dependency, especially when they are working hard to pull themselves up.
Today, as a community leader, I see the healthcare dilemma as another way that keeps people down, depressed, in a constant state of dependency and indignity. This is a part of a larger system that in many ways is a question of racial and minority equity, simply because it impacts them so much, like low wages, like transportation issues, like food, nutrition, hunger, like criminal justice, which is biased against the poor. It all has to be seen in a larger more discriminatory view. Seen in this way, politicians can and always have made the poor their scapegoat for all that is wrong and their ineptitude and their unwillingness to work together to solve human problems and to blame the minorities with an implicit bias of unworthiness to receive benefits equal to the wealthier side of our society.
This is unfair. What we need today is quality healthcare for the working poor, we need insurance, not more charity that creates dependency. We need people to become healthier and to be more productive citizens capable of growing and supporting themselves, their families and their community. I am a person of faith who is driven by a moral force that says we are all worthy of dignity and deserve to be treated fairly as human beings. That is what my faith and my United Methodist Church Social Principles declare.
-The Rev. Charles Swadley, former director, Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy
Comments from Ms. Cameron:
You have heard compelling information from our speakers regarding how all of our faith traditions speak to the moral imperative for helping our neighbors in need, not just to preserve their health and well being but also our own. Many of our legislators speak to the cost of providing needed health care services but the reality is that we cannot afford not to ensure access to care by every Virginian.
Some of these reasons include:
• Virginia will forgo $6.2 million each day, on average, from 2017 to 2022 in Federal funding, including a savings of $186,000 daily in state tax revenue. This means more revenue will be available to support education and build our infrastructure for the future.
• Expanding coverage would support an estimated 15,700 new jobs in Virginia.
• Early prevention and the primary care associated with having health insurance lowers death and disability rates. For example, there is a 4.5 percent reduction in potentially preventable deaths among insured persons.
• Also, those insured are 80 percent less likely to have catastrophic medical expenses and 50% less likely to borrow money or fail to pay other bills because of medical debt, supporting the economic stability of our families and communities.
We need to ask our legislators, if not now, when? How many Virginians will continue to suffer needlessly while we turn back their hard earned Federal taxes and wasting their State tax dollars?
-Karen Cameron is the director of Virginia Consumer Voices for Healthcare
Comments from Kim Bobo:
Today the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy convened a press conference in the House Briefing Room for faith leaders to publicly release a letter from almost 300 diverse clergy from around the Commonwealth calling upon our legislators to close the healthcare coverage gap. The religious community has demonstrated its unified support for expanding health care coverage for the 400,000 Virginians who fall in the gap between Medicaid and the Healthcare Exchanges.
We also learned today that the Senate Finance Committee and the House Appropriations Committee (the committees that deal with the budget) stripped the funds in the Governor’s budget intended to expand healthcare and thus draw down the federal dollars set aside for this critical coverage. Nonetheless, the time in not up. The General Assembly is still in session. We are people of faith – we must not be resigned to this negative outcome, nor can we stop advocating justice. Not only is it morally right for a society to provide healthcare for poor and working families who are currently excluded, but it makes financial sense for all taxpayers. This expansion will be paid for by federal funding that we are missing out on by not creating a plan for providing health coverage for needy people.
About an hour before our press conference, the Virginia House leadership renewed their opposition to Medicaid expansion, calling it a failed program even though it helps a million Virginians and could reach 400,000 more, and said that instead the budget would add money to free health clinics for the poor. Although no dollar amount was given, a modest expansions of health clinics is a woefully inadequate response to the healthcare crisis in Virginia.
Although many of the legislators appear intransigent, as people of faith we will continue to advocate, importune and pray. The legislature is still in session for another few weeks and could recognize the error of its ways. Legislators know the statistics that for everyone who acts, there are many, many more that share your views but remain silent. Surprisingly, five to ten calls really get attention — twenty-five will overwhelm them. Keep them on their toes by calling or emailing.
In addition, we want to encourage Gov. McAuliffe to continue pressing for health care coverage expansion.
We are asking you to send letters to your Representative and Senator urging them to insist that money be put into the budget (all of which will be reimbursed by the federal government) for closing the coverage gap.
This is my fifth official day at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. It is such a blessing to be working with you. We want to do more work like we’ve done on this important issue, but will need your support as we move forward. Please let me know how you want to get involved. Please pray for me and the Center. And if you are able, consider making a financial contribution to support the work.
-Kim Bobo is the Executive Director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy