Christians Should Support Healthcare

Sean McKenzie writes:

A recent Harvard study estimates that 45,000 Americans die per year because they don't have health insurance. Therefore, a health-care bill that allows 36 million uninsured to get some form of health coverage would likely save tens of thousands of American lives per year, more each year than the total number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

This fact, if true, leaves us with three options.

• Do nothing and watch health-care costs continue to increase.

• Pass the Senate's health-care bill, save the lives of 45,000 people per year as costs continue to go up due to increased number of people covered.

• Support the health-care bill, save 45,000 lives and control costs through the use of insurance cooperatives and a public option.

Obviously, the best outcome is choice three, but it seems just as obvious to me that choice two is vastly preferable to choice one. We have certain obligations to each other, and if we can save each other's lives, all things being fairly equal, then we certainly should.

We should especially feel obligated to save each other's lives if we are Christians. The Bible instructs us to love our neighbors and treat others as we want to be treated. It would seem to me that in this debate, Christians would be leading the charge to insure 36 million and to save the lives of 45,000.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The Christian Coalition is leading the charge against the health-care bills and making donations to its opponents, the leaders who are trying to maintain the status quo of 45,000 uninsured dying per year.