8-09-07, 10:01 am
According to a July 31, 2007, MSNBC headline, religious doctors are less likely than nonreligious ones to care for patients who can not afford health care. University of Chicago professor Farr Curlin surveyed 1,820 doctors, and learned that many of those reflecting “intrinsic religiosity” did not demonstrate their faith through their practice (Reuters Limited, msnbc.com, July 31, 2007). While this is most certainly true, the question is, why is this headline news? The facts about religious bigotry and lack of health care in the United States have been common knowledge for years.
The United States is the most religious nation in the developed world. According to Stephen Prothero’s recent book, Religious Literacy, it is also one of the most ignorant nations about religion and its history (Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: what Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t, HarperSanFrancisco, 2007). Consequently, Americans who cannot identify Genesis as the first book of the Judeo/Christian Bible flock to a $25 million dollar Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky and buy wholesale unscientific notions such as humans and dinosaurs walking together. Religious who complain about inadequate health care would deny basic medical benefits, such as access to safe abortions and safe sex counseling, to those who need them most. To make matters worse, government-mandated mergers between religious and nonreligious health care facilities constricts health care options by eliminating procedures deemed objectionable by the religious partner in such alliances. In addition, despite the support of numerous physicians and scientists and a large segment of the pharmaceutical industry, stem cell research is stopped cold because of President George W. Bush’s religious bigotry and his fear of losing the support of religious fanatics.
What is the result of this ignorance? The United States, which has no universal health care system, ranks 37th in terms of overall health system performance of the 191 nations represented in the World Health Organization. Cynic Michael Moore’s film, Sicko, suggests that Americans know less about democracy than they do religion. Cashing in on held-over Cold War paranoias, pharmaceutical companies and politicians blitzed the American public with propaganda associating Hillary Rodham Clinton’s proposed universal health care system with totalitarian atheism.
The intention here is not to condemn religion. Clearly, there are many religious Americans whose desires for better national health care grow not from superstitious beliefs, but from genuine concerns for the welfare of our people. Luminary Martin Luther King, Jr. preached an undifferentiated love for all of humanity. This core belief is an important part of many people’s religious creeds, and it is shared by multitudes of nonreligious people.
These things point to a dire need for Americans to wake up and learn. People should find out what their religions actually teach by examining their religious texts and questioning their religious leaders. If they find that their religion fosters ignorance and intolerance, they can exercise the religious freedom that they crow so much about and switch faiths. They should also learn some basic lessons about democracy, and democratic traditions. Self-righteous Americans should know that their intransigent ignorance would horrify the founders of this nation, who championed democracy (albeit bourgeois democracy). Perhaps then Americans can begin to see that they have been duped by their leaders, who used their blind religious faith to bastion an exploitive and undemocratic system. Maybe then they will see that actions speak louder than prayers, and demand basic health and other basic needs for all people. Only then will they be ready to seriously entertain the notion of true socialism.
--Anna Bates is a contributing editor of Political Affairs.
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