Susan Pitchford

“A single misery suffices to condemn a society. It suffices that a single man be kept or knowingly left in need for the entire civil contract to be null and void. As long as there is one man outside, the door which is closed in his face encloses a city of injustice and hatred.”

Charles Péguy (1873-1914), French socialist, nationalist and Christian, quoted in Louis Evely’s classic “Suffering” (1967)

I remember the first time I realized the injustice of the U.S. health care system. I was twenty-one years old, a newly minted R.N. working in a clinic for poor people in the projects of Huntsville, Alabama. We had a patient named Pat, a woman in her thirties, who had asthma and chronic bronchitis. She was too poor to keep her prescriptions filled, so instead of keeping her asthma in control she went from one crisis to the next, buying drugs when she had pneumonia and groceries when she didn’t.

One day I asked the clinic doctor what would happen to Pat, who looked at least ten years older than she was. “She’s going to die.” The doctor was matter-of-fact, having seen it all before, but for me it was a moment of lost innocence. I realized that there were untold numbers of Pats all over the country who were going to die young because we just didn’t care enough to keep them alive.

And now, when I hear all the opposition to health care reform, I think of Pat. “Pat of Huntsville” is my icon for all the suffering poor who don’t matter enough for us to overcome our selfishness and fear for our own security. I grieve for Pat, but I also grieve for all of us who look at her tired and anxious face and fail to see the face of Christ himself. I think Péguy was right, but I would add that the parable of the sheep and the goats tells us that that “one man” (woman, child) who stands outside is always Christ the Lord.

At Jesus’ trial, the crowd cried, “His blood be on us, and on our children!” (Matthew 27:25). I’m afraid that there are those among us who are willing to make the same deal.