Contemplative Bible Reading

Some thoughts about Bible verses

Contemplative Bible Reading header image 2

Churches and Health Care

January 4th, 2010 · No Comments

This is not a usual entry in this blog. Instead of commenting on scripture, I write a little about health care and what churches could be doing.

One of the missions of Christianity is to care for the poor. Churches in America have succeeded, but it is a success that ultimately may lead to failure. Moral imperatives from churches moved our government to collect taxes and use tax money to fund health care for the poor. This would be good were it not for the common failings of government. It seems that, regardless of the best intentions, government is largely inefficient and ineffective. One result is that persons following the Christian imperative to help the poor pay 30%, 40%, and more of their income in taxes and yet there are many poor who do not have adequate health care. The tax drain on the religious largely prevents them from contributing enough through churches to provide health care for the poor.

Consider that there are people in America who have jobs, but do not have health insurance. They have some money – too much for government aid and not enough for medical care.

For the most part, churches cannot pay health care bills for these people who receive no government aid. Health care bills for the uninsured are huge. A young man I know broke a leg last year. He had no health insurance, and the bill was nearly $10,000. His church could pay the bill for him, but that is only the cost of one person having one accident.

A modest proposal is to do what churches have done for centuries – medical missionaries. Churches have sent medical missionaries to Africa, Asia, and other places in the world for several hundred years. The concept was that these missionaries would attract the locals with a service they didn’t have – health care. Once the medical missionary showed love to the locals through medicine, the Bible would be taught. “This is what Christians do, and this is why.”

I propose churches do the same domestically – in America. Pay the costs for a person to attend medical school. That allows a person to become an MD debt-free. Instead of spending a large portion of their new MD salary on debt reduction, the debt-free doctor would spend a large portion of time (a third to a half) treating people at no cost. The same would be done for nurses and other medical professionals.

Such a plan would take time to come to fruition – probably eight years for the first group of debt-free doctors to emerge. After that time, there should be a steady stream of doctors coming every year.

One problem – will the government allow doctors to treat people at no cost? Will a doctor be allowed to perform surgery on people at no cost?

If someone in Congress would take up the cause, perhaps we can push this through. All that is left is for churches and others to step forward.

Tags: Health Care

0 responses so far ↓

  • There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.

Leave a Comment