Mennonite Weekly Review

David L. Weldy’s letter on health care reform asks, “Should there be individual freedom and self-determination? Does an individual have a right to the fruits of one’s own labor? Is there any freedom if there is no freedom to fail?”

Although I am less sure the Bible supports individualism than Weldy is, I agree with these statements. National Public Radio this week told of a middle-aged couple who work five part-time jobs. They and their two teenagers have health insurance with huge holes. Last year they spent 45 percent of their income on health care and are still deep in medical debt. Do they have “a right to the fruits of their labor”?

My son works hard at home for an e-learning company in Ireland, which is helping pay their COBRA premiums from his last job. But the company paid one day late last month, so coverage was abruptly dropped. With asthma and other pre-existing conditions, what chance do they have to get any health insurance? Do they have “a right to the fruits of their labor” without fearing bankruptcy from medical bills?

Yesterday, while filling out forms in a doctor’s office, I heard a worker phoning a patient to tell her coverage for her surgery has been denied. Later, my doctor told me she does not know how to help her patient without this necessary surgery. Who has “individual freedom” here?

Health insurance companies make profits for their shareholders and CEOs by denying coverage. In this way, shareholders make money without labor. Millions more dollars from our premiums are used to lobby Congress to keep health insurance companies profitable. They make sure they have no “freedom to fail.”

Weldy cites scriptures that he assumes promote individual freedom rather than government taxes. Those texts, however, emerge from cultures that had no centralized government (Ten Commandments) or from Roman-occupied Palestine. Democratic governments did not exist. Survival demanded communal sharing, not “individual self-determination.”