Moral Revival for Virginia’s Healthcare
Below is an excerpt from the Virginia Consumer Voices newsletter:
On Monday, may people gathered to hear Rev. Dr.. William Barber II and other speakers as the “Time for a Moral Revolution of Values” tour stopped in Richmond. The event was co-sponsored by the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP) and the Virginia Council of Churches.
Rev. Barber gave a compelling case for why Christians are all called to advocate for social justice, gaving a comprehensive history of how scriptures have been taken out of context to propogate the concept that wealthy people have been blessed because they are somehow more deserving than their less affluent brothers and sisters.
During the training for the event, Karen Cameron, VCV’s Director, and Cassandra Shaw, VCV’s Outreach Coordinator, talked about key issues impacting Virginians. Cassandra spoke to the group on wage theft, a problem that affects many workers in industries like food service, lawn care, construction, and other important areas of our economy. Virginia has few protections for workers who find themselves a victim of wage theft and honest businesses trying to compete with dishonest ones suffer, as well.
Karen Cameron talked about Virginia’s General Assembly’s failure to accept the federal funding that would expand health insurance coverage to 400,000 “working poor” Virginians and/or their families without access to healthcare. “Virginia’s Medicaid system is among the most restrictive in the country” in terms of its qualifying requirements, Cameron said. “People without health insurance often wait for care and then go to the emergency department or get admitted to a hospital, and that costs us all in terms of higher medical costs, lost payroll taxes, and increased disability.”
Accepting the $2.1 billion federal dollars that could be rolling into Virginia annually, Cameron said, would also mean the creation of 16,000 new jobs, $68 million in tax revenues, plus millions of savings annually as federal dollars are used for services that currently are funded with state dollars.
Dr. James Forbes Jr., who keynoted VICPP’s Day for All People in January, was the featured preacher at the Moral Revival event. He noted during his sermonthat he would be finished in
time for people to see the first presidential debate on TV because of the importance of this year’s election.
“What would it mean to live in an America where God’s will was taken seriously,” Dr. Forbes asked the full-house crowd at the Virginia Union University Chapel. “I think I hear God’s voice, and he’s saying “I ain’t playing around no more, y’all.”
Stand in the breach for all of our low-income, hard-working friends and neighbors in Virginia, and join in calling on Virginia’s legislators to stand in the breach with us by closing the healthcare coverage gap in the Commonwealth.
