A Question of Compassion
With the terrible story of the woman thrown out of the hospital into the freezing cold, there comes the cries of those watching: "What is happening to our compassion as a country?" Have we lost our way? Have we gone completely out of our minds?
I wouldn't go that far, but we do seem to have lost sight of what it means to be a compassionate people. That may go part and parcel with the increasing attitude of greed that seems to be swelling in the country.
Have you noticed when we talk about health care reform it has to do with making insurance affordable? What about making health care itself affordable? Like lowering the costs of medicines, procedures, tests, and doctor visits? Of course that can't come up too often because then people would stand to lose a lot of money. And affordable insurance only goes so far - especially when it doesn't cover anything once you get really sick.
We want to increase business wealth. We want to make America great again. But to do that we seem to have focused almost exclusively on how to make money and how to help those with money make more.
As such, deadlines and limits and terms of stays in places like hospitals have more to do with turnover and bed space than it does about compassion or caring. Are they well enough to leave? Then move them on out. Insurance only covers so many days. We can't let them freeload off their insurance!
And out they go.
It's been coming for a while, though. The corporate America has been working to swallow the more traditional America for some time. And it has certainly gotten quite the leg up in the last year. And that might be the nature of the beast. Can we create companies who make money but also have compassion?
Perhaps. But we also have to remember that institutions have no soul.
I don't mean that as a slight against any particular corporation or institution. It can be said about the church as well. As an institution it has no soul because it is an institution. The people in the institution have souls. And that's where the issue is. Do we sell out our souls for the sake of gain? Do we throw people out in the cold for the sake of our bottom line?
And as we ask that we have to realize that the question goes much farther than the corporate top. It goes all the way down to the person who rolls the wheelchair into the cold and dumps the "discharged" patient into the snow and goes back in. What is the condition of their soul? Perhaps it reflects the corporation or, just maybe, the corporation reflects the fact that that kind of person has gotten more and more of the power.
Have we lost our compassion? No. But we don't seem to want to exercise it as frequently as we should on a larger, community wide scale.
I wouldn't go that far, but we do seem to have lost sight of what it means to be a compassionate people. That may go part and parcel with the increasing attitude of greed that seems to be swelling in the country.
Have you noticed when we talk about health care reform it has to do with making insurance affordable? What about making health care itself affordable? Like lowering the costs of medicines, procedures, tests, and doctor visits? Of course that can't come up too often because then people would stand to lose a lot of money. And affordable insurance only goes so far - especially when it doesn't cover anything once you get really sick.
We want to increase business wealth. We want to make America great again. But to do that we seem to have focused almost exclusively on how to make money and how to help those with money make more.
As such, deadlines and limits and terms of stays in places like hospitals have more to do with turnover and bed space than it does about compassion or caring. Are they well enough to leave? Then move them on out. Insurance only covers so many days. We can't let them freeload off their insurance!
And out they go.
It's been coming for a while, though. The corporate America has been working to swallow the more traditional America for some time. And it has certainly gotten quite the leg up in the last year. And that might be the nature of the beast. Can we create companies who make money but also have compassion?
Perhaps. But we also have to remember that institutions have no soul.
I don't mean that as a slight against any particular corporation or institution. It can be said about the church as well. As an institution it has no soul because it is an institution. The people in the institution have souls. And that's where the issue is. Do we sell out our souls for the sake of gain? Do we throw people out in the cold for the sake of our bottom line?
And as we ask that we have to realize that the question goes much farther than the corporate top. It goes all the way down to the person who rolls the wheelchair into the cold and dumps the "discharged" patient into the snow and goes back in. What is the condition of their soul? Perhaps it reflects the corporation or, just maybe, the corporation reflects the fact that that kind of person has gotten more and more of the power.
Have we lost our compassion? No. But we don't seem to want to exercise it as frequently as we should on a larger, community wide scale.
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