Orthodox Rabbi Pens Jewish Week Op-Ed for Health Insurance Reform

Aaron Keyak — August 25, 2009 – 5:34 pm | Barack Obama | Domestic Policy | Health Care Comments (1) Add a comment

An Orthodox Rabbi in New Jersey, Craig Miller is part of Rabbis for Health Insurance Reform (RabbisforHealthCare.org) and wrote a piece for The Jewish Week, “Health Care for All: Tikkun Olam for this Generation.” Miller gave a passionate and reasoned argument reflecting the Jewish perspective on the much needed reform.

Here’s the beginning:

I pen this piece wearing many kippot: as a husband of a cancer survivor grateful for American health care excellence, as a father of a special needs child fearful for my son’s care options, as a professional who worked on health care issues in state government, and as an American hoping to see the dream of comprehensive health care access become a reality.  Finally, I write as a rabbi wishing to see the Jewish value of tikkun olam spread to our dysfunctional medical system.

Our health care needs a tikkun.

The current system contains great contradictions.  Islands of medical excellence coexist with vast swaths of uneven and inaccessible care.  Mediocre overall results come at an ever increasing cost.  Experts agree that the current cost spiral curtails accessibility.  President Barack Obama has rightly recognized that the high cost of health coupled with millions having inadequate access is a moral failing for the world’s richest nation.  He has begun an initiative to address these failings, one in which the Jewish community has a vital stake.On an ethical level, Jewish values abhor a system that denies needed care.  Families are forced to choose between food and medicine, insurance is denied to those who have prior illnesses or simply do not make enough to buy adequate coverage.  Because of her insurance, my wife receives excellent care and services that would be out of reach to millions of Americans.  This disparity is fundamentally wrong.

On a communal level, the Jewish community has built and maintains comprehensive chesed systems, such as Federation agencies and Bikur Cholims to assist Jews and non-Jews with access to quality medical services.  Since private tzedaka can rarely cover the cost of health care, all of these efforts vitally depend on robust comprehensive public insurance programs.

In fact, it is the existence of these government programs which allow the Jewish communal dollar to be applied on other projects besides health care.  These freed funds support an array of services that benefit Jews and non Jews in hundred’s of communities.  Without solid reform, our communal chesed institutions will face overwhelming demands from individual and families who have fallen through the every widening cracks in our failing health care system.

Click here to read the rest…

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