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From National Health Ministries
[3-30-09]

A brief report from the Aging in America Conference – and thoughts on the impending dissolution of National Health Ministries

We recently received this report from Patricia K. Gleich (Pat), Associate for National Health Ministries of the PC (USA). As that program will be disappearing, we believe they should be heard from just one last time.

Pat's Patter

I started putting together this newsletter from the Aging in America Conference, which I was fortunate to attend as the Presbyterian delegate on the National Interfaith Council on Aging (NICA) and finish it now during a time of great uncertainty about the future of National Health Ministries. Decisions by the GAC this week - forced by budget difficulties - will impact future programming of the NHM office. [WebWeaver’s note: Pat Gleich’s fears seem to have been justified. According to the decisions taken by the GAC and announced on March 27, 2009, the National Health Ministries program area has been eliminated. We find this beyond comprehension in this time when health issues are so urgent for so many.]

And so, I write this newsletter knowing it might be the last correspondence from the office and my last opportunity to let what has become a vibrant and vital e-community know how profoundly grateful I have been to work with you. During this past almost 8 years (my first day at the center was 9-11!) I have met and talked with many of you at conferences, or worked with you on committees or task forces, but for some, we have simply been e-correspondents. My life and work have been so very enriched by these varied encounters.

And, once more, I'd like to affirm, the crucial work related to health ministries in congregations. Congregational health ministry provides the connection of a community and demonstrates the compassion of that community like nothing else.

I think our work is even more critical now, as people are losing jobs and homes, and sometimes even hope. If your health ministry does not include support groups for people who are struggling, please add one. Create a place of psychological safety for people to be appropriately angry or sad or simply to express and have validated whatever feelings surface. We read of situations where people who have experienced job loss are too embarrassed to reveal it and go to great lengths hide their situation. I would like to think that in our congregations we find ways to let these folks know that they will not be viewed as any less valuable or competent or worthy.

Substance abuse, domestic violence and other unhealthy coping rise during times of increased stress. Be certain to be vigilant with people who might turn to uncharacteristic behaviors as they struggle to cope. This is not to target them, or demean them, but to help them. In our congregational care teams, we already understand that asking for help is rarely easy. At this time, people may appreciate an unsolicited gesture of kindness or appreciation or a barely perceptible net of safety.

Now – back on topic with highlights from the Aging in America Conference

NICA is getting ready to launch an interactive website that will make it very much easier for individuals and adults who are looking for ideas and best practices in older adult ministry to not only find resources, but to find "communities" for discussion or simply conversation. I'm pretty certain that there will be an announcement about the launch of the new website, so watch the regular NICA website at NCOA - http://www.ncoa.org/ for the update.

One of the other highlights of this conference was my opportunity to present the results of the Presbyterian Engagement in Volunteering study we did through the Presbyterian Panel last year. Some of the highlights of that study are contained below and the PowerPoint will also be hosted on the Healthy Living website. I'd also like to congratulate POAMN for earning and receiving a NICA Best Practices Award for their "certification program" – during the conference.

Thank you for all that you do and I hope to hear from you still.

peace & grace
Pat

5 Myths About Our Ailing Health-Care System
[12-8-08]

This incisive look at the U.S. health-care system (if “system” is the right word here) was published in the Washington Post on Nov. 23. We’re a little slow here, but we think it offers a very helpful survey of the problem, which will hopefully be getting renewed attention in Washington.

The “five myths” they list are:

1. America has the best health care in the world.
2. Somebody else is paying for your health insurance.
3. We would save a lot if we could cut the administrative waste of private insurance.
4. Health-care reform is going to cost a bundle.
5. Americans aren't ready for a major overhaul of the health-care system.

Shannon Brownlee, a visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, is the author of Overtreated. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and author of Healthcare, Guaranteed, is chairman of the center's Department of Bioethics.

The article >>

Note: You may be asked to sign in or register to access the article, but it’s free.

Broader medical refusal rule may go far beyond abortion [12-4-08]

David Savage, reporting in the Los Angeles Times, says that the outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new 'right of conscience' rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.

More >>

Wal-Mart joins union in calling for universal health care coverage for all Americans by 2012.
[2-9-07]

Wal-Mart Watch, which is sponsored by Wal-Mart labor unions, links to a variety of reports on this hopeful development.

A quick sample:

Wal-Mart, Union Join Forces on Health Care     [Washington Post]
At a news conference on Capitol Hill, Wal-Mart chief executive H. Lee Scott sat at one end of a table and vowed to put aside differences to "drive this debate forward." On the other end was Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and frequent Wal-Mart critic, declaring he had made a "tough choice" in the goal to improve coverage.

Wal-Mart, union push universal health care      [CNNMoney.com]
In a partnership of unlikely allies, Wal-Mart's CEO, other corporate leaders and the head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) called Wednesday for universal health care coverage for all Americans by 2012.

Wal-Mart Joins Health-Care Call            [Wall Street Journal]
The campaign -- which is also supported by AT&T Inc., Intel Corp., staffing firm Kelly Services Inc., the Communications Workers of America and three public-policy groups -- comes amid a surge of interest in how to extend health insurance to the 46 million Americans without it.

Healthcare reform calls get louder      [Los Angeles Times]
The proposal was short of specifics but had four broad themes: universal health coverage by 2012, better preventive care and disease management; more efficient healthcare delivery, and cost-sharing by workers, employers and governments.

What’s happening to America’s middle class? [12-21-06]

You may have heard CNN’s Lou Dobbs declaim about this issue recently, in ways that seem to make immigrants the main culprits in the decline of the middle class.

The Campaign for America's Future is now recommending a new book by Yale political science professor Jacob Hacker, entitled The Great Risk Shift: The Assault On American Jobs, Families, Health Care, And Retirement-And How You Can Fight Back.

Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign, writes, "The book has extraordinary explanatory power – made all the more compelling by Hacker's skillful use of short vignettes – stories of individuals and families coping with sudden unemployment, the loss of a breadwinner, a seriously sick child, or the mounting costs of education." He adds that Hacker is setting forth a "plan for health care for all – a plan that would guarantee choice of either traditional private insurance or a new cheaper Medicare-style system – while rapidly getting all Americans covered."

See more comments on the Campaign for America’s Future website >>

If anybody out there has read this book,
or can read it soon and give us some comments on it,
we’ll be happy to share it here.
Just send a note!

Single-payer healthcare is gaining support -- and needs more support

This comes from Healthcare Now [9-28-06]

Have you noticed? The national single payer healthcare movement is growing in strength.

Therefore, not surprisingly, the healthcare insurance industrial complex is scurrying about trying to find new ways to hang onto their immense profits. They’ve devised plans for parents to keep paying for their children’s healthcare into their late twenties or thirties in several states and a plan to deliver a Medicare-type plan (for which they get a big government subsidy, thanks to the Bush administration) that will provide for full choice of doctors and, most importantly, more dollars for themselves.

The "Massachusettization" of the debate is one of the ways the insurance companies are attempting to gain more profits. They claim that providing state by state so-called "universal" systems such as the Massachusetts plan extracting more government money and our personal money to pay insurance companies bigger bucks -- requiring middle class working people to purchase insurance from those same insurance companies-- will provide some kind of minimal insurance product that might be called "healthcare for all."

There are some politicians in Congress who want to see this kind of "corporate universal health insurance" partly because they are being called on to produce a healthcare plan and partly because a for-profit system doesn’t jeopardize their campaign contributions from the health insurance industry and its Washington lobbyists. Their mantra is "anything but single payer." In other words, "keep our profits rolling in! Don’t jeopardize the privatization agenda.

This callous (or perhaps misdirected) attempt at "non-partisan" universal healthcare is constructed on the backs of millions of suffering people in our country.

Here’s what you can do: Most people are not fooled by these corporations. Healthcare-NOW is supporting the birth of a movement for a real 21^st Century healthcare system in this country. Just today, another person in yet another state called to get involved in organizing a community campaign with Healthcare-NOW for a national single payer healthcare system. You could do the same.

People are fed up with having the insurance companies and Big Pharma dictate the terms of our healthcare.

We have a new project called "the Health Insurance Hall of Shame." And you can help. As we began planning it, we realized that there are hundreds of ways to focus national attention on the abuses of these companies. They fight against and have destroyed every effort to win a national non-profit healthcare system. People need to know this. We want to encourage lawsuits against these companies that have been committing "insurance company malpractice." Lawsuits should be filed against these companies when they deny care to desperately sick people and cancel their policies if the bill gets too large, charge ever growing premiums, deductibles and co-pays. We can develop a brief bank and a team of lawyers to take on these giants. And we should challenge their investments in Big Tobacco and other harmful corporations – investments they profit from by using our money. Watch for our new blog on the "Hall of Shame." And join us. Your help is essential to this project.

We can elect a Congress that will support a truly national single payer healthcare system and reject insurance lobbyists' bribes. We can educate and organize the public and arm ourselves and our neighbors against the parade of falsehoods and myths perpetrated by these companies. Michael Moore is looking for people to appear in his new film, people who are up against impossible odds if they don’t get the medicines and treatment they must have if they are to survive "death by denial." You can help find these people and participate in promoting the film.

You can help make national healthcare a reality by joining Healthcare-NOW; send us your stories for Michael Moore; form a Healthcare-NOW group in your own community (there are over one hundred of these groups now); send us some financial support to keep this movement rolling; get copies of our materials; call us up or send an email and we will plug you in. Please check out the website today – right now -- www.healthcare-now.org. Hit donate to join. Call: 1-800 453-1305; Write: info@healthcare-now.org,

Just be in touch. We want to hear from you! There is no way we can win this without the mass movement that is made up of you and you, and people like you.

Thank you for your support,

Marilyn Clement,
National Coordinator, Healthcare-NOW.

Budget for FR 2007 would move health care costs further onto the shoulders of individuals

FamiliesUSA provides an analysis of the proposed budget [2-27-06]

On February 6, 2006, President Bush released his FY2007 proposed budget. The budget provides details about the Administration's health policy goals for this year, and will shape the congressional budget process that will take place over the next month.

In an effort to clarify what this budget--if approved--would mean for American health care consumers, Families USA has just released an analysis of the Administration's health care proposals contained in the budget.

Read their FY2007 budget analysis >>

State medical care program under attack in Tennessee

from Witherspoon Issues Analyst (and Nashville resident) Gene TeSelle [7-18-05]

Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee has proposed that over 300,000 people be cut off TennCare (the state’s Medicaid program) and health care for 700,000 others be severely restricted, A group of activists — many of whom rely on TennCare themselves — has been occupying the Governor’s office, using the best American traditions of civil disobedience to defend the lives and welfare of their fellow Tennesseans.

Some background: TennCare was the most innovative program in the country when it was developed ten years ago. But it has been plagued by administrative problems and questionable practices by contracting HMOs. And the state has never complied with a federal mandate to monitor drug prescriptions.

Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen has made draconian cuts, losing millions in federal funding. His motives are ideological – he told the National Governors Conference last winter that Medicare is "socialistic." He also happens to have made his own millions by selling health care equipment to sick people.

The issue is currently being debated in federal court. In the meantime, there is a sit-in in the Governor's office by TennCare recipients (including some with serious disabilities) and their supporters. It has now broken the record for sit-ins, at 28 days.

Many governors are bothered by increasing financial costs, largely the result of federal restrictions. There is a bipartisan effort among the governors to reform Medicare. But this is an example of a Democrat running interference for what many Republicans want. Observers feel that this will be a disaster for the Democratic Party in Tennessee after the effects of the cuts become apparent in every county in the state, placing additional burdens on doctors and hospitals.

It's not Social Security that's in crisis. It's the health care system!
[4-13-05]

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has pointed out recently that our nation’s real crisis lies not in the area of Social Security, or even Medicare, but the whole health care system.

Read this in the Times, or in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

A new Health Care Bulletin from the Presbyterian Washington Office, provides a very helpful survey of this crisis, with a focus on current budget discussions in Congress, and on efforts to slash funding for Medicare.

The bulletin includes a list of how Senators voted on the Smith-Bingaman amendment to remove the Medicaid cuts from the Senate Budget Resolution. They provide suggestions for letters to convey concerns to members of Congress, along with a 1999 General Assembly policy statement on managed health care, and a letter to the President and members of Congress from the Washington Interreligious Staff Community Health Care Working Group.

The case of Terri Schiavo

Witherspoon member Dean Lindsey asks for reflection on the tragic and conflict-laden case of Terri Schiavo -- and he offers some opening thoughts. [3-21-05]

A political take on the situation: It's a "midnight coup" in Washington

The L. A. Times comments on the intervention of Congress and the President as a "midnight coup," short-circuiting the role of states and their courts, thus merely imposing a right-wing interpretation of morality on the nation.

We welcome your comments!
Just send a note to be shared here.

Code Blue - a national campaign to bring focus to the health care crisis in America.

The Peace committee of Wabash Valley Presbytery has made a proposal for a national campaign to reduce the cost of health care.

Their statement says: "We believe our national health care system is in a state of crisis. To call attention to that national emergency, we are asking that "we the people" of America begin wearing "Code Blue" buttons on our lapels. This is a call for: (1) public awareness of the issue, (2) increased legislator awareness of the need for health care cost reform, and (3) help in repairing our unhealthy health care system." [12-9-04]

New resource list on health care issues [8-22-02]

Families USA's Health Action Network has collected information on several new reports and other resources available on the Web, relating to issues and policies in America's health care system.

PCUSA works with many others in Coalition on Health Care, to deal with the "downward death cycle" of the US health care system

[4-18-02]

The Rev. Bruce Gillette has pointed us to a column by David Broder in the Washington Post, highlighting recent statements from many sources agreeing that "the health care system is in crisis."

"The warning takes the form of the announcement by the largest purchaser of medical care in California that its insurance premiums are going up this year at a staggering rate. By the time this column is in print, CalPERS (the 1.2-million-member California Public Employees' Retirement System) may have announced the exact figure -- likely to be about 25 percent, almost twice that of last year."

William Crist, the president of CalPERS, has joined the National Coalition on Health Care, "a bipartisan organization that has been pressing for comprehensive reform to install quality measures, control costs and slash the numbers of uninsured."

Gillette notes that the PCUSA is a member of the National Coalition on Health Care.

Assembly acts on abortion, other health issues

by Nancy Rodman, PNS

[published here on 6-19-01]

LOUISVILLE -- June 15, 2001 -- The 213th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Friday morning declined to honor the request of the Bills and Overtures Committee to arrest the report of the Health and Social Issues Committee and kept going until nearly lunchtime, wrestling with issues related to abortion, mental health benefits, and care for older adults.

Guidelines adopted for stem cell and fetal tissue research

The Assembly adopted moral and ethical guidelines for stem cell and fetal tissue research. Recognizing both the great progress in stem cell and fetal tissue research and the complexity of the moral issues involved, the guidelines offer moral and ethical guidance on the use of tissue derived from fetuses, subjecting it to appropriate limitations. Under the guidelines, the decision to have an abortion will be separate from the decision to donate fetal tissue and the sale or commercialization of fetal tissue will be legally prohibited. Research with stem cells obtained from human embryos will be conducted only when the goals to be accomplished are compelling and unreachable by other means. As with the use of fetal tissue, sale or commercialization of embryonic tissue will be legally prohibited.

Assembly refuses to take anti-choice actions

In other abortion-related business, the Assembly

declined to establish a special committee to conduct a study of abortion in a biblical and theological context. The last such study was completed in 1992.

declined to direct the Board of Pensions to require notification of a parent at least forty-eight hours in advance of any abortion performed on a minor daughter.

referred two abortion-related matters to the Advisory Committee on Litigation and the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy. Both concern late-term abortions, an issue already before the two advisory committees which expect to report to the 214th General Assembly next year.

Equal benefits sought for mental health care

As a result of action taken during the Friday morning business session, the General Assembly will advocate passage of legislation requiring health insurance plans to provide mental health benefits in full parity with medical and surgical benefits, directing the Office of the Stated Clerk to advocate for passage of such legislation in the 18 states lacking it. The Assembly also directed the Office of the Stated Clerk to advocate for passage of the federal Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act (S.796) co-sponsored by Senators Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Paul Wellstone (D-MN).

Additionally, the Assembly urged the Board of Pensions of the PC (U.S.A.) to evaluate annually issues of parity between coverage for mental health and medical and surgical benefits under plans offered by the Board of Pensions, and to include its evaluation in its annual report to the General Assembly. In a statement during debate, the Board said that it fully complies with the intentions of the Domenici-Wellstone bill.

Caregiving with older adults is supported

By approving a Resolution on the Ministry of Caregiving in Relation to Older Adults the Assembly enacted a number of measures to strengthen the church's care of its older members including the parish nursing program which would be affirmed as a model for caregiving ministry and established or strengthened in partnership with community agencies. Middle governing bodies would, among other measures, offer ministries to retired pastors and education and training to meet needs at the local level. Among the measures directed to congregations are observation of Older Adult Week, development of support and other programs, training of those responsible for visiting in spiritual enrichment visiting, and expansion of their awareness of new ways of caregiving, especially as found in the racial ethnic groups of the church.

End-of-life issues to be studied

The Assembly recommended that the General Assembly Council study the publication "A Message on Suicide Prevention" of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and make recommendations to the 214th General Assembly in 2002 for its potential use in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Assembly commended the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America suicide prevention statement for study.

The General Assembly deferred until 2006 any end-of-life policy development, but it will organize and host a national dialogue in 2002-2003 on the theological issues related to end-of-life care. That dialogue will be followed over a two-year period by similar presbytery-wide, or regional, dialogues and resources will be made available.