My Twitter Pal Advises a Rabbi on Health Care Reform

By GottaLaff

One of my Twitter pals, "BernieKram", wrote this up to share with our TPC readers. I think it's an important story, and a touching one... and informative:

I went to visit my Lubavitch Rabbi today. I had not seen him since the High Holy days and we chatted and caught up on our lives. I found out he had a new son, six months old who had a rare hereditary disease (only about 700 documented cases) found only in Ashkenazi Jews and he had been in and out of hospitals since he was born. As you might expect the conversation turned to health care and health care reform.

As we talked, I realized he had pretty much bought into much of the misinformation about reform and I tried my best to disabuse him of these. He defended private health care companies and how public choice was going to put them out of business. I assured him that they probably wouldn’t go out of business, but might have to change their business model a little to compete.

He was concerned that because of a public option, doctors would make less money. My answer was a shrug of the shoulders and a “why would that be so bad?”

I turned the conversation to the obscene profits private health care companies are making and how they can afford to spend $1.5MM a day to try to defeat reform. I asked him why he though they would spend this kind of money other than to protect their profit stream.

He then related a conversation he’d had with a health care executive about why health care companies can’t afford to pay claims for pre-existing conditions. It came down to that they lose money on “everyone of these people.” My Rabbi, being a firm believer in capitalism, found that very reasonable. I agreed, that from a pure business perspective, that made sense…for the company.

So I asked him about the morality of denying someone lifesaving treatment. Doesn’t the Torah say that to save one life is to save the world? The Talmud tells us that the wealthy have an obligation to use their money to help those less fortunate. Is it any less so for corporations? Is it moral to deny lifesaving medicine or treatment in the name of corporate profit? I asked him, as a man who lives a moral life and carries out the mitzvoth, how can he reconcile that? I had taken him from the realm of money and profit to the realm of man’s obligation to another man, a place where he lives his life and what he sermonizes about every week.

One last thing, I’m a Cohane, a member of the priestly caste, who, tradition has it, are directly descended from Aaron, Moses’ brother. As I was leaving after an hour of talking and debating, he asked me for a priestly blessing. I was stunned. I’d never been asked this before. I protested that I wasn’t worthy of blessing such a learned and righteous man as he, but he insisted. My blessing was, “May Hashem grant long life and peace to you, your wife and your children.”

Perfect, Bernie. Every word. You have the wisdom and patience of a, well, rabbi.