The healthcare pinch

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LOUISVILLE — The high cost of healthcare and how to surmount it will be discussed during the next episode of “The Struggle is Real," a webinar series focusing on affordability issues through November.

The episode, taking place at 1 p.m. Eastern Time Oct. 1 on Zoom, is the second of three webinars being hosted by the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People to encourage congregations and other people of faith to get involved in intersectional poverty issues and be in solidarity with those who are directly affected. 

“During this economic downturn, many people are delaying medical visits, skipping needed medications, or choosing between healthcare, food, rent, and other basic needs because of rising costs,” according to SDOP. “A panel of SDOP-funded groups will share how they work for accessible healthcare through community education, patient support, policy advocacy and organizing.”

The panelists who have been announced, so far, include:

• The Rev. Dr. Michelle Simmons, founder of Why Not Prosper, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization that supports women who've been incarcerated to become “responsible, economically self-sufficient and contributing members of society.”
• Dr. Mark Douglas, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister who’s also the J. Erskine Love Professor of Christian Ethics at Columbia Theological Seminary, where he directs the Center for Theology and Contested Publics. 

SDOP started "The Struggle is Real" about five years ago and relaunched it in early September with a webinar on labor and living wages. 

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“'The Struggle is Real' series emerged from Matthew 25 conversations with mid councils and churches about eradicating poverty and how SDOP-funded partners could serve as valuable resources for the wider church,” said the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson, who manages SDOP, a ministry of Presbyterian Life & Witness. “It also gave Presbyterians space to recognize that they are not alone in this struggle.”

In “Life Abundant: Values, Choices and Health Care, the Responsibility and Role of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)” (1988), the General Assembly of the PC(USA) acknowledged that “health and healing are central dimensions of the faith we profess” and went on to say, “We must reclaim the power and promise of God's gifts of wholeness for our life and work in fresh ways in the face of the current crisis in health status and health care in our nation.”

The assembly also stated in that policy statement, “It is morally imperative that the United States address the serious health crisis … in which runaway costs flow to a system that has little impact on basic indices of health status and leaves large numbers of Americans with little or no access to health care, including the most vulnerable among us.”

To learn more or join the discussion, register for the healthcare episode of “The Struggle is Real” at pcusa.info/sdop-struggle-webinar. You can watch previous episodes here and here.