Is there no balm in Gilead?

Jer. 8:22. "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?"

One of the advantages that I have from my Seminary training is an understanding and appreciation for the bible. But of course, as a Rationalist, my appreciation only goes so far; in as much as the bible contains wisdom, I am for it, while at the same time being restrained by reason to be honest about its ugliness. That said, I think that there is something beautiful and transcendent about the verse I quote here.

The passage is an interesting gem of wisdom concerning a person’s desperate "crying" for the health his people. The first two questions are interpreted as rhetorical and are followed by a question that implies a positive answer to those rhetorical questions—in other words: “Yes, there is a balm. Yes, there is a physician. Therefore, why is there so much sickness among my people?”

I challenge you to take this passage as a metaphor concerning the state of health access in the United States. Persons like me lament the fact that in what is arguably the wealthiest nation in the West people are forced to make decisions regarding their health based on their financial situation when there are resources in abundance.

You might think that I am talking about health care for the sick and rebut me by saying that people can and do access Emergency Room care at other people’s expense when they are sick. But you would be wrong; I am not suggesting that the poor and sick do not have access to healthcare; they certainly do in most cases, even when they cannot pay.

But rather, what I am lamenting is the fact that the working poor often do not have access to the right kinds of food that promote and sustain “the health of… my people.”

It is a fact that in the United States food cost is that part of the budget that is flexible in a context of several other monthly “static” bills that cannot be negotiated such as the rent, utilities, car payments, etc. What can be adjusted, and often is, is the money spent on food.

The consequence of this societal curiosity among the working poor was dealt with by David K. Shipler in his book The Working Poor. The anecdotes that he retells are the stories of pediatricians who are overwhelmed by cases of babies who “fail to thrive” because they are born into families who can pay the rent, but cannot afford to pay for nutritional food for their offspring.

This problem is directly connected to policy regarding the whole ideal “poverty” in the United States. Federal Poverty guidelines are benchmarked against food costs, or what a basket of “basic” (i.e. non-healthy) food costs rather than what has become the number one cost American consumers have in the contemporary economy: housing.

What this means for the working poor is that in order to not be homeless, one has to buy and eat cheap food, cheap formula, go on public assistance (whatever is left thanks for the reactionary Right), etc.

This one issue, I think, exasperates the disparate problems around “the health of my people” and it is a problem that can be addressed simply by bench marking federal poverty guidelines to housing and/or creating a minimum wage benchmarked to the same (as opposed to benchmarking it to absolutely nothing but the whim of Congress as is now the case).

What do you think? Take a look at the Center for Public Policy Priority’s Family Budget Estimator and see if you could make it in Texas (keep in mind Texas’ cost of living is much lower than some places):

http://www.cppp.org/fbe/

http://universallivingwage.org/

The Working Poor, Shipler
Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich