IT’S CLEARER FROM BACK HERE! (a reflection on health care reform)

Usually we “step closer to see more clearly” – making distinctions, noticing details, observing  subtle inter-connections.  Except with impressionist art: “step back to see more clearly.”  Consider Cathedral at Rouen by Claude Monet in the National Gallery, one of thirty paintings by the French master of the façade of that great cathedral, each a different time of day.  Stand first a foot or two from the canvas, where you can make virtually no sense of the short, broad brush strokes, shades of white, yellow and orange.  Step back six feet and you can discern basic contours of the cathedral – immense doors, a circular window, a soaring steeple, the heft of the portico rising from the columns that frame the entrance – but no detail.  Step back, four or five feet at a time, and statuary spaced on pedestals above the window become increasingly clear, the fold of robes, and the length of beards, clearer yet with each backward step.  From twenty feet figures in the Rose Window become clear enough to name the biblical scenes depicted.  Ironically, paradoxically all becomes clearer from a distance.

View health care reform like an impressionist painting.  Step back from the increasingly acrimonious debate, details that distract, and the ideological maneuvering.  See the whole canvas of health care reality.  Nicholas Kristof ingathered the widely available data compactly – the awkward if not embarrassing data – in a November 5^th Op-Ed piece in the New York Times.    We may have awesomely advanced health care technology, but our health care delivery is nothing short of woeful.

• The U.S. ranks 21^st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile
• We are 37^th in infant mortality and 3th in maternal mortality
• Statistically, Canada’s health care system out-ranks that of the U.S. in five of ten key categories, the U.S. superior in two, with three a tie
• Among 19 developed countries the U.S. ranked 19^th in “preventing avoidable diseases”
• Americans take 10% fewer drugs than the global population, but pay 118% more per pill
• The U.S. does rank 1^st among those 19 developed countries in the health of those over age 65 – the age at which a universal health care system becomes available

The very first attempt to craft health care reform legislation was vigorously resisted when insurance and pharmaceutical companies exercised concerted opposition, but was ultimately defeated when it was successfully characterized as . . . Bolshevik – in 1915!  I do not write to advocate a partisan position, even on the current health care proposal before Congress.  I write to personally declare that this “reality seen from a distance” is morally unacceptable, ethically indefensible, and humanly abominable.  That nearly a century has passed with that same reality available to those who would look, without public outcry, without some combination of public and private creativity and action-taking, of which we are clearly capable, is nothing short of a disgrace. 

I write as a follower of Jesus and the Prophets, in close partnership with those who follow Mohammed or Baha’u’ullah, the Buddha or Confucius of those of other paths that weave spiritual fulfillment and social justice.  My mind, my heart and my faith tradition will not countenance silence, insist on outrage, stir lovingness, and demand action.  Come stand “back here” and join me!