U.S. moral values, public policy disconnect

I know Americans to be the most generous, most caring, most concerned people on the globe.

When we witness tragedy, we want to help.

When people are hurt or ill, we want to give aid and comfort.

Where there is suffering, we step forward to bring relief.

I also know America to be a country of moral values: We value life; we value our young people and our seniors; we value hard work and willing hands; we value dignity and virtue.

What I find troubling is the complete disconnect between our national character and moral values and the public policy that is being established in this state and this nation.

Specifically, I refer to Medicaid cuts in Missouri and some of the changes in bankruptcy law nationwide.

How do we reconcile our concern and caring, and our moral values, with these punitive public policies?

Medicaid

Medicaid costs were a campaign issue in Missouri, but the campaign promise I heard was that Medicaid would be reformed; that fraud and abuse would be rooted out and the guilty made to pay.

Instead, our state went the quick-and-dirty route of cutting eligibility.

While this is a move that looks great on the bottom line, it neither fixes the system nor eliminates fraud and abuse. Also, rather than punishing the guilty, it punishes the poor, the disabled and the sick.

In the America I know and believe in, if you’re poor, and you’re trying to work to support yourself and your family, and you don’t have access to health care through your employer, you deserve help.

If you’re disabled but are able to work part-time to supplement your family’s income, and thereby gain the dignity and satisfaction of being a productive, contributing citizen, you shouldn’t have to give up your job – and your dignity – in order to qualify for public medical assistance.

If you are sick or have a chronic condition but are able to work, and you now make too much to get Medicaid but cannot afford the medications that keep you alive, I do not believe, as the state of Missouri’s policy demands, that you should die.

How can we have a “culture of life” yet blandly and blindly allow people to die because they’re making an effort to help themselves?

Bankruptcy

America’s new bankruptcy law, effective in mid-October, is based on the premise that people who declare bankruptcy are bad, irresponsible people who are taking advantage of the system to buy big screen TVs on MasterCard and then leave you and me with the tab.

Sure, there are a few of those people, but again, rather than investigate and eliminate fraud and abuse, our government has swatted a fly with a sledgehammer in the form of “bankruptcy reform.”

The truth is that most people who declare bankruptcy are middle-class families who’ve done nothing but what they thought they were supposed to do: they bought a house in a good school district for the benefit of their children; they purchased two cars because both parents had to work to afford the home in the good school district; and, often, they accepted the liability of health care costs for a sick child or parent, or were stricken with an unexpected health expense themselves.

I personally know two people who’ve declared bankruptcy in the last 10 years. In both cases, it was the result of medical bills for their children – one experienced complications at birth that resulted in a week-long hospital stay for mother and newborn; the other had a premature baby that weighed less than 2 pounds at birth and was hospitalized for several months.

Also, a lot of credit card debt is equally the responsibility of the debtor and the creditor – when credit card companies send instant checks and credit card offers to people who are already in debt and/or have no ability to pay, it’s the credit card company’s lousy underwriting standards, as much as the desperate debtor, that are to blame.

Why is it the government’s job to shore up private industry’s shoddy underwriting standards? I thought this was a free-market economy.

For more information about bankruptcy in America and who is affected, see SBJ’s March 8, 2004 review of “The Two-Income Trap,” by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi.

Clarissa French is editor of Springfield Business Journal.

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