Editorial

The U.S. Congress returns to session next week and will take up health-care legislation. National attention to this legislation included an action by Mennonite Church USA delegates at Convention 2009. The delegates adopted a resolution calling us to ask our representatives “to support legislation that would extend access to health care to all Americans” …

The U.S. Congress returns to session next week and will take up health-care legislation. National attention to this legislation included an action by Mennonite Church USA delegates at Convention 2009. The delegates adopted a resolution calling us to ask our representatives “to support legislation that would extend access to health care to all Americans.”

“Until we have specific legislation,” says David Gautsche, MMA’s senior vice president for products and services, “we won’t know how it aligns with the delegate action.”

On the other hand, Tim Jost, who authored the resolution adopted by the delegates, insists now is the time for us to contact our representatives.

“Now is the time for people to get involved to help shape the legislation,” Jost says. “We know what the basic legislation will look like.”

Jost says that Mennonite Church USA members should support the legislation currently in the House of Representatives because it would do what Mennonite Church USA statements on health-care access reform have requested. According to Jost, who has read the statute, the legislation would do five things:

• reform the insurance market,
• expand Medicaid so that all poor people are covered,
• subsidize premiums on a sliding scale for people whose income is less than 400 percent of the poverty level,
• require individuals to purchase health insurance, even if they are healthy,
• require large companies to provide health insurance.

It is uncomfortable and nearly unprecedented for Mennonites to get so involved in such a national policy discussion. In this case, there are also some delicate cross currents to our involvement. MMA’s future is one of them.

“MMA is clearly aligning with the [delegate] resolution,” Gautsche says, “and working with Mennonite Central Committee and the Mennonite Church USA peace and justice office. We don’t know what the implications are for MMA, but … I’m convinced that there is some role to help our members navigate the health-care system.”

Another voice in the Mennonite Church USA system is MHS Alliance, a denominational entity that provides leadership for 73 retirement communities and health-care providers.
“We do support the migration of health care in the direction of [it being a] ‘right’ rather than a ‘retail commodity,’ ” says MHS Alliance president Rick Stiffney.

But Stiffney also notes that most of the nonprofit providers within MHS Alliance depend on state and federal reimbursement in the form of Medicaid and Medicare. This means that, like MMA, these institutions will be affected by changes to the health-care access system.
“We support health-care reform that expands access through a system in which risks, costs and responsibility are shared by all,” says Stiffney. He notes that certain elements in the proposed legislation are especially important to MHS Alliance:

• provisions that cover dialogue about end-of-life care,
• expanded public assistance programs, such as Medicaid,
• initiatives that would ease pressure on providing health insurance for employees, so that employers are not forced to decrease benefits.

The proposed legislation seeks to reform the insurance industry; that will have significant ramifications for MMA, our church’s health insurance provider. It also will require large companies to provide health insurance; this will affect many of the large entities served by MHS Alliance.

The delegates at Columbus 2009 passed their resolution overwhelmingly. That was the easy part. More difficult is understanding the potential effect on some of our important church institutions. Fortunately, representatives from these agencies have been talking to each other.
So that Mennonite Church USA members can be unified in our advocacy, we need these entities to find a consensus. Doing so will not only help people in the pew understand what is at stake, it will also strengthen our voice when we talk with our elected representatives.