Micah Center Speaks On Health Care

Dr. David Van Dyke recently stood behind a podium in the Sunday School class at Seymour Christian Reformed Church, speaking and running through a Power Point presentation that focused on the value, necessity and even duty of the United States to adopt a single-payer health-care system.

The Grand Rapids-area neurologist was at the church on a Sunday in early March as a representative of the local Micah Center, a grassroots social justice organization founded three years ago by retired Reformed Church in America pastor Vern Hoffman.

In a question and answer session, a few people expressed other opinions on the matter, wondering if universal health care would end up being a form of socialism that could diminish the ability of individuals to make free choices about their medical care. They strongly disagreed with Van Dyke on assertions that U.S. lawmakers don't take their Christian faith seriously and that they fail to consider the needs of the poor.

Van Dyke was there to inform the class of adults that the Micah Center has adopted the position that Christians are called to "believe that everyone in the United States, as a child of God, should have adequate access to health care . . . Health care is a basic human right."

Although the Micah Center is not sponsored or approved in a formal way by the Christian Reformed Church, many CRC individuals and churches help to sponsor it and the CRC’s Office of Social Justice has co-sponsored events with the organization and considers it a regional partner. In addition, the Micah Center was the recipient of a grant from the funds collected in the Sea-to-Sea, cross-country bicycle fundraiser that occurred in 2008.

Hoffman says the Micah Center has positions on and advocates for change on a number of issues. For instance, the Micah Center organized a gathering outside of a theater near downtown Grand Rapids this week to bring attention to a local lawmaker's stance on immigration reform.

On the recent Sunday, Van Dyke was hammering home the Micah Center’s belief in the inequities that are rife and inherent, as he and the Micah Center see it, in the nation's health-care delivery system.

A long-time physician and professor of neurology at Michigan States University, Van Dyke is also a committed Christian who has seen firsthand how people with resources are able to obtain good care and how those without resources can receive a lower level of care.

Van Dyke, who belongs to the Christian Reformed Church, said he favors a system such as the publically funded one in Canada. Contrary to some reports, he said, Canadians in general love their system.

"We have to ask if profits should drive our health care system," said Van Dyke. "We also need to look at the reality that we are the richest country in the world and yet we have some shameful health care statistics."

With such high-tech medicine and the latest in drugs available, the U.S. ought to be a leader in caring for the health of its people, but it isn't doing that for various political, economic and social reasons.

"We have twice the deaths from curable diseases than do many other countries in the world," said Van Dyke "Patients without health care insurance are going without care. Or they often end up in an emergency room that is ghastly expensive."

It bothers him as a follower of Christ that the debate over universal health care is so acrimonious when to him the teachings of Christ are clear on this matter.

"Christianity has been invested in healing since its beginnings," he said. "Christians often refer to Jesus as the Great Physician . . . Jesus brought the good news to the poor and he told us that we will always have the poor and sick among us."

As he spoke Van Dyke, flashed slides to illustrate his words. In one slide, he had this phrase: "Healing is a token of God’s triumph over sin." He also quoted Rev. 2:14, which highlights the priorities of God and, speaking of the last days, describes how God "will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

In yet another, he had: "We at the Micah Center believe universal health care is demanded by our biblical mandate to meet basic human needs." And this:  "82 million Americans spent part of the last two years without health insurance . . . Uninsured are increasingly the middle class."

Hoffman says the Micah Center doesn't have all of the answers, but it works to bring attention to important issues related to justice.  He began the center after reading a passage in the book of Isaiah that spoke of God's command to care for the widow, the orphan, the sojourner.

Reading this really hit him and made him think of how straightforward God's commands are and how politicians and others in the United States simply ignore those commands. Out of this thought process emerged the Micah Center, which meets twice a month at Hope Reformed Church in Grand Rapids to discuss topics and plan actions that can bring attention to issues, and eventually even help to create healthy change.

"We try to dialogue with people on many of these issues," said Hoffman. "We welcome anyone to the Micah Center."

In another publication, Hoffman said: "We're working on structural injustice – that's not a popular area in the church.  But I think if a church is going to be true to its calling, it needs to be working on behalf of the poor."

The Micah Center also holds such events as "Love Fearlessly, Do Justice," which will feature a keynote speech on April 16 at LaGrave CRC by Ron Sider, a well-known evangelical theologian and Christian activist.  His topic will be "Global Poverty, Biblical Justice, and a Christian Response."

Co-sponsored by the Association for a More Just Society, the event will run from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and will include breakout sessions, including, among other things, biblical responses to human trafficking, immigration, racial reconciliation, urban violence and public education. Details and registration are at Grand Rapids Justice Conference.

The Micah Center also offers a speaker's bureau of people who can come out to churches and elsewhere to address, as did Van Dyke at Seymour CRC, issues such as health care. "Our goal is that we want people to be engaged, inspired and informed," said Hoffman.