Loving the Fear Out of Health Care
by Lowell Grisham
Printed in the Northwest Arkansas Times, Fayetteville, AR
September 28, 2009
Fear is the opposite of love. “There is no fear in love.
Perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18) Fear is essentially a faithless reaction. The grip of
fear is the worst possible context for solving problems or for living well. Fear can make us crazy. I’m
told that the command “Fear not,” “Do not be afraid,” or “Be not afraid” is found 365
times in the Bible, once for every day of the year. Jesus presents himself as a man of faith, not fear.
But
many in our nation are currently in the grip of fear. Can the rest of us love them through it?
Psychologist
Martha Stout compares this moment in our nation’s history with other times when many Americans were irrationally fearful:
the McCarthy era when anti-Communist paranoia made neighbors afraid of neighbors; during World War II when we feared that
every Japanese American was a spy, so we collected them into camps; after the Civil War when the Ku Klux Klan feared Negroes
would take over the South and created an atmosphere of terror. In her book The Paranoia
Switch, Stout describes how corporate fears can be manipulated to tragic effect. She says merchants of fear are
creating a similar ethos today.
What we need is for people of faith to meet fear with enough love that fear can
be healed and cast out. Then we can use our higher mental and ethical functions to solve the problems that we need to
solve together.
Recently the evangelical publication Sojourners (SojoMail,
9/18/09) offered a case study for overcoming fear with love. They wrote about how Glenn Beck has shared his personal
anxiety about his daughter who has cerebral palsy. His daughter’s suffering “gets to the heart of his fears
about health-care reform,” Sojourners said, quoting Beck:
They [the government] will say exactly what doctors said about my 21-year-old daughter: “She
may not really have a quality of life. She may not walk or talk or feed herself. But then again, miracles happen.”
The “then again, miracles happen” part of that will be left out of the conversation. And I will not be able
to see my daughter’s 21st birthday, where I can reflect with her how miracles do happen. Because really, as I
was told at the beginning of her life: Well, what kind of quality of life is she going to really have? I don’t
know, but that’s for God to decide, not the government. (The Glenn Beck Program, 8/6/2009)
Sojourners says they agree with part of what Glenn Beck says: God is the giver of
life. But he is wrong to think that his child would be threatened by health-care reform . In fact, “the
lack of affordable, accessible health care is one of the reasons that people choose to terminate difficult pregnancies.”
The lack of affordable, accessible health care is one of the great stressors, and the main cause of bankruptcy in our nation.
Two friends of Sojourners recently discovered that their unborn child has
a life-threatening brain tumor. Unlike nearly 50 million other Americans, this family has insurance, but their out-of-pocket
costs for this complicated pregnancy will cost them 20 percent of their modest income. If their total bill exceeds $250,000,
they would pay everything above that. When the mother finishes her Ph.D. this spring, her coverage ends in August, and
with her child’s pre-existing condition it is unlikely that they could ever get family coverage.
“Our
friends do not fear a future where a government bureaucracy forces them to kill their child,” write Sojourners. “Doctors in the current system have already suggested abortion. Their fear is
more immediate: If by some miracle their child survives beyond the womb, will they be able to afford the care she’ll
need once the insurance coverage ends?”
The reform proposals being debated now do not take away a parent’s
right to carry a child to term and do not deny life-saving treatment to anyone in need. They do include provisions to
cap out-of-pocket expenses and exclusions for pre-existing conditions and exclude limits like the one that threatens this
family. Health-care reform is pro-life. Consistently pro-life.
Sojourners is responding to Glenn Beck’s
request for prayers for himself and for his child. And they are praying and advocating for the unborn child of their
friends. They are praying for enough love in our nation so that we can create a compassionate response to our neighbors’
needs, so that everyone can relax as much as our Medicare-eligible seniors can. So that everyone has access to the health-care
they deserve as human beings.
The health-care reform movement is a movement of love. Sooner or later,
love overcomes fear. With rational minds and good hearts, we can make that sooner, not later.
