Health Care: A Right and a Responsibility

By Dr. Frank Thomas
Senior Servant
Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church
Memphis, TN

This past Sunday I stood and told my congregation that some health professionals believe that up to 70 per cent of all illness is lifestyle related. Virtually, each Sunday, I suggest to them that high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. can all be affected by our choices of diet, exercise, stress, sleep patterns, and avoidance of a sedentary lifestyle. I advocate that health is our personal responsibility. Each of us increases or decreases our risk for disease and illness by our lifestyle choices. While the health care debate is raging, much of the discussion is based upon what happens after you contract illness and what kind of care one has a right to after they get sick. But I am raging for prevention. Given my genetic makeup, my choices have a direct bearing on when and how I will intersect with the health care industry. I live by this maxim: my health is my personal responsibility and within the circumference of diet, exercise, sleep, and stress reduction, I do all that I can to minimize disease and illness in my life.

It pains me that one of the most overlooked aspects of the present health care debate is the preventive aspects of disease and our personal responsibility to do all that we can to stave off illness. There is not much discussion about our habits of living that increase the risk that we will incur disease. Fundamentally, as a culture, we will not challenge how we eat, what we drink, sedentary lifestyles, devastating stress, and erratic sleep habits. We have only minimally challenged the food industry, what one author called, "Big Sugar," and "Big Beverage," in much the same vein as we learned the devastating effects and denials of "Big Tobacco." Because we will not address this corporately, then we are forced to spend trillions of dollars on health care. We are forced to fund our own societal negligence. In essence, the health care debate amounts to how we will fund our lack of societal responsibility to set the framework where people can make more effective and healthy personal responsibility lifestyle choices. Some want private industry, primarily through employer-based insurance programs, and others want governmental involvement to provide care for those who cannot afford it and keep the costs down.

As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and as a person of faith, I believe that health care is a right that is basic and fundamental to human existence as food for our stomachs, clothes for our bodies, and education for our brains. Every person has a moral right to safe, affordable, and efficient health care. There are people in our nation that die for a lack of access to health care and from my perspective this is social sin. It is a crime before God that in the richest nation in the world people die prematurely for a lack of health care and 47 million people do not have health care.

My argument is plain and simple – Medicare as a health option for everyone. Let me emphasize the word "option." People could choose to stay with their private or employer based health insurance. The sum total of my argument is this: according to my research, the government runs the Medicare program for an older, much sicker group of people and does it for about $7200 per person. The insurance industry provides health care for $6800 per person and it covers a much healthier and younger group of people. If Medicare were allowed to cover everyone at the age of 55, it would bring the cost of coverage down because the larger and younger pool of people that could be insured. A Congressional Budget Office study says that if young, healthier people sign up for Medicare, it would drive down costs and save a trillion dollars over ten years. Despite the claims that the "government cannot run anything," my informal research suggests that by and large most seniors, including my parents, are happy with Medicare. They choose their own doctor and hospital and Medicare runs smoothly and efficiently.

Unapologetically, I support "socialized" medicine. I want competition for "Big Insurance" and “Big Drug” companies. But, there are many myths and much anger in our nation now, and given our bailouts of "Big Banking," I am not sure that reason and the best plan will be adopted, if any plan will be adopted. But as a citizen of these wonderful United States, I exercise my right to free speech to support socialized medicine, even as I head to the gym to take responsibility for my health. Ultimately, my health is my personal responsibility within the circumference of my choices of diet, exercise, stress reduction, and sleep habits whatever form of health care is offered in this nation.