RevCyn

So I spent some time on Healthcare.gov today, the questions being 1) How hard is this, really? and 2) Is there a comparable plan to my employer's healthcare plan (the UUA's Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield) that would cost less money? Last night I created my user name and password, and then was booted out of the system because it was under maintenance.  Fair enough. I went back in today.  I had to answer some security questions that prove that I'm me.  It turns out the government has more handy access to facts about myself than I do.  I had to chase down the information of what year my car is.  Then I had to provide information on the members of my family, including how much money we make, before taxes.  That's complicated.  How do I classify my housing allowance?  I decided to just put it in as income before taxes, even though it won't be taxed.  What about my husband's income?  Well, he's an adjunct professor.  We never know ...

Here's the sermon I gave on health care last Sunday (September 27, 2009). Please keep in mind if you weren't there that much of the passion is in the delivery. If you were there, the same thing goes. In eight years I’ve been in ministry, there have been a handful of national issues that have seemed to me to demand a loud, clear, moral voice from the faith community. I felt the need to speak up about the violence and discrimination I saw against the Muslim community following September 11th, 2001. I felt the need to talk about and organize forums in opposition to our going to war in Iraq. I mourned the victims of and the seemingly overwhelming racism revealed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There are all sorts of moral outrages, threats to the environment, racism, heterosexism, classism, and all sorts of other evils to confront in our society, but these national-level issues took a demanding center stage in their time, commanded my attention, and absorbed my thou...

I've taken a couple weeks off from posting about health care reform, but this week I'm preaching on it, so it's very much on my mind. Of course, sermon writing and blog writing are two very different things, so I'm writing this in hopes that it will get some of the stuff I'm feeling out of the way and I can get down to writing a real sermon tomorrow. That will be focusing on the moral issues of health care reform--our moral obligation as a society in how we deal with suffering, for example. So today, you get how I really feel about insurance. I got in an argument with a friend recently about what the purpose of insurance is/should be. I think maybe she was arguing what it is, and I was arguing what it should be. Essentially, what I believe insurance should be is it should be a capitalist system wherein we essentially socialize a system--we spread costs that would be unbearable for any individual person across a whole group. We collect insurance premiums in orde...

What I'm hearing from people against healthcare reform is as follows: They don't want death panels. They don't want rationing of healthcare. They don't want government-funded abortions. They don't want government-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants. They don't want socialism. They want to be able to keep their existing insurance. There are lots of people debunking this, but here are my thoughts: "No Death Panels": There are no death panels being proposed. But if you're against death panels, you should be against private insurance, because that's essentially what they offer now. The insurance company's job is to find ways to not cover people who need medical care, in order to maximize their profits. This is done through several means: denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or health risks; denying a claim; and cancelling insurance when somebody falls into a risky category. "No rationing": Nobody wants this....

I'm still irate about Jackson County Commissioner Phil Duckham's carrying of a swastika sign to the healthcare rally/protest last week, and his comments to the press comparing Obama to Hitler. Because I am still irate, I am going to choose his latest remarks for my next rant. Reader beware. Since the statements Duckham made, there has been a press conference about the issue that I attended, and a County Commissioners' meeting that I did not. In the write-up of those two events, the Jackson Citizen Patriot writes : Reached by phone after the press conference, Duckham said he does not believe an apology is in order. Although his actions at the rally might not have been the best choice, Duckham said, he still stands by his comparisons between Nazi politics and Obama's plans for restructuring America. "Was it my best choice to carry the sign — no. In hindsight, I wouldn't have done it," Duckham said. "But I will stick to my point that I was trying to ...

My blog posts aren't usually so personal about my life as this one is going to be. I have two main stories about my struggles with and without healthcare insurance that illustrate problems in the system. The first is when I had a major injury--a broken vertebra--when I was not insured. The second is trying to move jobs and switch insurances when pregnant. The first situation, the broken back, occurred when I was fresh out of college. I graduated and stayed in the Detroit area doing temp work. I quickly found a job through a temporary employment agency, where they placed me in a "permanent temp" position working for Blue Care Network , an HMO of Blue Cross Blue Shield. Now, I don't know about you, but I think one reason companies hire "permanent temps" is so that they don't have to pay benefits, but ironic as it is that a health insurance agency doesn't want to have to provide all their employees with health insurance, that's aside from the p...

Jackson County Commissioner Phil Duckham carried a sign with a swastika (with a circle and slash "no symbol around it) on it to the recent healthcare rally in Jackson, and the Jackson Citizen Patriot says in an article about the rally : "This is how Hitler started out," Duckham said. "First, Obama took over the auto industry, then the banking industry. We don't need him to take over the health-care industry." What follows is my letter to the "Voice of the People" (letters to the editor) of the Jackson Citizen Patriot: As a person of faith and as a citizen, I am appalled at County Commissioner Phil Duckham’s public actions and statements comparing Obama to Hitler. They were callous and insensitive comparisons. Comparing Obama to Hitler shows ignorance of Hitler’s motivations and actions, and insensitivity to the Holocaust survivors in our own community. I invite any making such comparisons to do more to inform themselves. Actions I have taken to in...

Today we had a rally for Healthcare reform in Jackson, MI. Somehow, people had gotten word that there was a rally scheduled at 4:30 to protest against healthcare reform, so various local groups got together to state a counter-demonstration in favor of healthcare reform starting at 3:30. I got notified of the event from several different agencies-- Organizing for America , the Jackson Democrats, the Michigan UU Social Justice Network , MichUHCAN , and Planned Parenthood , as well as some church members. After four e-mails in a row popping into my inbox about it, it was clear this was a big deal in Jackson. My husband and I got there a little after three, and things were already well underway. There was a table registering people, handing out signs for those without (we came prepared), and handing out buttons to locals only and stickers to all. It was being run by Organizing for America personnel. This event was happening at Rep. Mark Schauer 's Jackson office, and congressional s...