Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
My Dear People,
I had passed hundreds of other road signs in the preceding hours, but, at the sight of "Wise," I jumped.
Earlier in the drive I had
been catching up on some podcasts and had listened to a story about Wise, Virginia. Last month a Remote Area
Medical (RAM) Expedition spent the weekend in Wise, giving free medical care to
2,700 people, many of those people arriving days earlier and sleeping in their
cars. RAM expeditions take place all
over the world, including in rural America. RAM's founder, Stan Brock, explains:
As it turns out, it was Wise, North Carolina, not Wise, Virginia, I passed yesterday evening. Nevertheless, the road sign served the same purpose, to set my mind on what many of our minds have spent much time on lately: the health care crisis in this country. (This morning, in the Richmond Times Dispatch, there is an op-ed about a new clinic in Bowling Green, Virginia, about 40 miles north of Richmond.)
Some say there is no health care crisis. Tell that to Loretta Miller, 41, of Honaker, Virginia, "They done an ultrasound and told me that my gallbladder was enlarged and was ready to burst and it could kill me...They told me if I hadn't got help when I did, literally I could have died."
All the shouting at the town hall meetings does nothing, of course, to help us arrive at a responsible and humane solution.
Eugene Robinson wrote an excellent column the other day about how two essential considerations in the health care-reform debate have gotten all muddled up together: a) the need to cut costs, and b) the need to provide health care for all Americans. That being said, would it be responsible to avoid either necessity?
Cain asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
We all know the answer to
that question.
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
