Explosion of the Spirit: A Spiritual Journey into the 2010 Healthcare Reform Legislation

Abstract

Recent healthcare reform legislation in the United States involved much debate and strategizing among various stakeholders. This article provides a narrative of the experience of one advocate and her organization, NETWORK, a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. This organization, which has a particular commitment to caring for and empowering people who live at the economic margins, has been working on affordable healthcare issues for decades. Recounting both the political processes and the personal and communal spiritual journey encountered during efforts toward this landmark passage, the author highlights the role of spirituality as both motivation and resource for engaging in social justice through legislative change.

Keywords:

• healthcare reform
• legislative advocacy
• spirituality

Notes

1. The employer-based healthcare system started during World War II when there was a wage freeze. In order to attract and keep workers, employers started offering healthcare coverage as a benefit. After World War II, the practice continued and was expanded as labor unions bargained for better coverage as part of their union contracts. By the mid-1950s, employer-based insurance coverage was seen as the norm.

2. There is not a lot of evidence that capping malpractice awards will significantly bring down the cost of healthcare. Several states have limited such awards, but not experienced a commensurate reduction in healthcare premiums.

3. NETWORK received many objections from our members that we supported a bill that was not just single-payer. The political reality was that if we wanted to be involved at all in the process we had to work for other ways of creating an affordable system.

4. This was the first time that Senator Baucus had handled such a major piece of legislation. Senator Kennedy's absence because of illness (and death) created a vacuum in experience and leadership.

5. NETWORK lobbied unsuccessfully against this provision because we were concerned that employers would have an incentive to terminate low-wage workers if they made a claim for the subsidy. We believed that a better way forward was with an employer mandate.

6. An additional issue that he raised was the lack of inclusion of immigrants in the Senate bill. Healthcare coverage for immigrants was another issue that was much better in the House bill than in the Senate version. The House had provided that immigrants could buy insurance on the exchanges while the Senate version prohibited immigrants from doing so and extended the ban on legal immigrants from benefiting from the law for the same five-year ban that exists currently for Medicaid coverage. The USCCB staff had worked on the Hill on the immigration issue as NETWORK had, but the major focus of the USCCB Hill involvement and field strategy was the abortion funding issue.

7. Congressman Stupak told me that it was this representation that got him to get President Obama to issue an executive order saying that he would indeed follow the law. This also proved insufficient to change the USCCB position.