Early in my journalism career, I wrote about murder, drug deals and domestic violence. That’s wrongdoing our country rightly condemns.
For the past 18 years, my investigative reporting has exposed price gouging and profiteering in American health care. That’s wrongdoing our country has come to accept.
Before I became a journalist, I spent five years in full time ministry and earned a master’s degree in theology. My religious training raised a few eyebrows and even I had to wonder what role it would play in my work as a journalist. It turned out to be much more useful than I anticipated. Covering health care should have meant highlighting ways the industry lived up to its ideals of caring for patients. Instead, I uncovered a cesspool of deception and greed that felt like descending into Dante’s Inferno.
Politicians debate about our broken health care system as if it’s a mere policy issue. But at its core, the American health care system has a moral problem. And it doesn’t require going to seminary to see it. Sunday school will do.
You’ve probably heard of The Golden Rule: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” Those are the words of Jesus, recorded in the Bible, in Matthew 7. People from all different faith backgrounds and worldviews also believe that it’s wrong to be selfish and exploit others. Yet this foundation of human decency seems like it’s been lost on the business side of the American medical industry.
The companies running our health care industry have business plans based on taking advantage of people who are so desperate for healing that they will pay any price. This insidious immorality has metastasized to the point that our health care costs are about twice as much per citizen compared to other developed nations. And our health outcomes are worse.
Costs go up every year and tens of millions of working Americans are uninsured or underinsured.
About 1 in 5 Americans has medical debt in collections and medical costs are a common cause of bankruptcy.
It’s routine for some people to go without the medication or treatment they need because they can’t afford it.
We even have hospitals suing and garnishing the wages of patients who can’t afford their bills.
This points to a deep moral problem that our policymakers and health care leaders have allowed to persist.
“Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,” Proverbs says. Our health care system needs to repent!
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