Advocate for the Children!

The Pastor’s Page

Even as the Senate begins debate on health care reform, and the House celebrated the passage of its version of a health reform bill, one very vulnerable segment of our population remains in danger of not having adequate health care benefits.
Children.
A report on National Public Radio said that if the Senate bill passes, childrens’ hospitals will suffer because they will get less funding. That will compromise their ability to treat a large segment of their patients – children who are on Medicaid.
And the Children’s Defense Fund points out that both the House and Senate bills threaten the vitality and survival of CHIP – the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
CDF says that the House bill will keep CHIP only until 2013 and then require as many as 10 million children to enroll in a new and untested health insurance plan that will be more expensive with fewer benefits.
The Senate bill keeps CHIP until 2019 but fails to fully fund it or make it easier for uninsured to become enrolled in the program.
The Children’s Defense Fund, under the guidance and direction of Marian Wright Edelman, has been working tirelessly to get all children health care. Statistics show that it is poor children who too often have no health care benefits, and in addition to that being a travesty in the so-called wealthiest nation in the world, it is also a death knell to many children who end up seriously ill or even dying from what have come to be known as preventable diseases and illnesses.
Not much talked about is the reality that many children in urban areas who are labeled “behavior problems” are very often more likely to be sick and untreated. Youngsters with everything from abscessed teeth to psychiatric disorders to chronic disease are being sent to school ill and are in effect being blamed for being sick because their illnesses affect their behavior.
Not only do these children suffer physically, but their ability to be educated goes lacking, which in turn affects their self-esteem. What ends up happening is that sick, untreated children grow into sick, untreated adults, often with behavior problems related to their illnesses, and then become labeled as criminals. They end up, too many of them, in prisons, still untreated, regarded as monsters or bad people, when if they had been able to receive adequate health care, many of their problems, and the problems they end up causing society, their paths in life might have been dramatically altered.
It is chilling the way all these things – inadequate health care, untreated illness, compromised ability to learn, “acting out” behavior, antisocial behavior and finally, prison – are related. There is a thread of “injustice” which ties them all together. Because the poor are so often and too often seen as objects and not as people, these children fall through the cracks, with nobody to advocate for them.
I am including in this week’s bulletin a flyer of information about an amendment to the current Senate health care reform bill being sponsored by Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). I urge you to read this information, and then call Ohio’s senators to urge them to vote FOR his amendment. Our senators are Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican George Voinovich. Senator Brown’s phone number is (202) 224-2315, and Sen. Voinovich’s phone number is (202) 224-3353. I am going to also give our Social Justice Ministry the job of getting the word out to the Columbus community about what is at stake for children, and I urge you all to ask people to read this pastor’s page on our website, www.adventucc.org
If we don’t advocate for our children, nobody will. When a person is seen as an object, it is very easy to either step on or step over him or her. It is our job as people who say we love the Lord to make sure that we advocate for the children, who are surely amongst “the least of these.”
Have a good week!

Pastor Smith