This sytem took more than one president to screw us up; I remember chaplain Gene warning us about it in great and well-educated detail when the hospital eliminated his position. (Free social workers, that's that they expect chaplains to be.) He had scoped out the managed healthcare that was coming and read it all quite accurately. We, the people, didn;t get on the ball quick enough.

LH, I really didn't like being called "you people." At Mudcat, the USers are people who yoiu have so much in common with, much more than the rest of our citizens I suspect. I for one get tired of being targeted as an American; of course the current regime sucks, but here at My=udcat, we're the sort working on changing it, not the people who were for it. We're outnumbered, unfortunately.

In our denomination, healthcare benefits are part of the low salary offered to masters-degreed professionals who work long, difficult hours. First, the public thinks they can park in the "clergy only" space where my husband often ditches his car on his way into the adjoining ER to respond to the hospital's pleas for emergency chaplain assistance ("Oh, was that your space, I thought you people only work on Sunday mornings"). Also, our parish-paid "health" benefits, while they eat up a lot of parish funds, provide coverage about as lousy as the public aid medical card I carried for awhile as a single parent.

My point is not that the clergy family should not have to endure long periods in waiting rooms, healthcare barriers, and bills like everyone else-- we're just PEOPLE. My point is that because our parish struggles so hard to pay for it, and since it's so expensive, they think they've provided for us well. They like to feel good about that. So they flip when we tell them how bad the coverage is, because it's costing them dearly to "look after" their priest as they would like to do.

~Susan