Pastor Todd Foster (pictured, at left), who shepherds Church on the Rock in New Haven, says every congregation he knows of is home to many uninsured and underinsured families — some of the 800,000 such people in Connecticut. So he was glad to attend a luncheon at 500 Blake Street geared specifically to the religious community, to learn more about the idea of universal health care and how people of faith can work toward making it a reality.
“I know a lot of people who use the emergency room as their primary physician, and it just ought not to be so,” Foster said.
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The Wednesday luncheon was organized by Christian Community Action (that’s Executive Director Bonita Grubbs with Pastor Walter Williams) and funded through a grant from the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut to do outreach to the faith community. The foundation’s director, Juan Figueroa, told the audience of about 50 people, “Our goal is to build a social justice movement that brings in universal health care to the state of Connecticut.” (Disclosure: The foundation contributes money to the not-for-profit organization that publishes this website.)
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He told the mostly black and Latino audience, “I’m sure a good number of you have health insurance policies. But what about the increase in co-pays? What about the limitations in terms of what you can and can’t do? What about higher deductibles?” And, he pointed out, that blacks and Latinos suffer the most from lack of health care.
p(clear). “The Institute of Medicine, just two years ago, put out a study that made it a known fact that race, national origin, and language do matter when it comes to the delivery of health care, and access to health care.” Click here to listen to more of what he said.
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Figueroa (pictured) pointed out that most people without insurance in Connecticut have jobs.
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Annie Garcia, who pastors the Christian Community for the Restoration of the Nations and also works for the Foundation, electrified the audience with a gospel song. Click hereto listen.
After the presentation, Figueroa said that his goal in making presentations to all kinds of groups around the state — communities of faith, the business community, unions and other non-profit organizations — is to get buy-in for the general concept of universal health care. Once that’s accomplished, he said, the foundation will work with those constituencies to fine tune a specific proposal to take to the legislature next year.
Pastor Todd Foster said he was pleased with the turnout, because getting that many clergy members together in one place was a minor miracle in itself. He pronounced himself ready to plunge in.
Seeing what a wonderful job Black and fundamentalist protestant churches have done with AIDS - NOT (the Catholic church needs to be slammed here too, well just about all churches...), what can one expect from a "faith" based healthcare inititiative. Let's see: AIDS is god's punishment for being Gay, disease is caused by "sin", praying cures illness, and death sends you to a "better place." Oh yes and let's not forget to eliminate honest sex education, and emergency contraception too. Will the state be forced to pay for exorcisms? Of course there are all sorts of lucrative "faith based" medical services that these "ministers" can cash in on too, which should improve the health of their church coffers, while at the same time increasing their clout handing out money to the members of their respective tribes.