Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Our health: A community parable
This is a parable for our times.
Once, a long time ago, there was a family who lived in a little house, surrounded by woods, on the top of a hill.
The father was self-employed, and owned a small business. The mother worked at home, preparing meals for the family, laundering their clothes, cleaning the house and helping her husband with his business.
To supplement the family income, she took in laundry and sewing jobs, and occasionally helped clean other people’s houses.
The three children were well-mannered and bright. They attended the local public schools. Since their father conducted his business out of his garage, he was always there when the children got home from school. And usually the mother also welcomed them home.
The father and mother earned barely enough money to meet the family’s needs. They were able to buy wholesome, nutritious food for the meals that the mother prepared and served in the home. There was not enough money to “eat out.” The children were unable to participate in after-school activities for which a fee was charged. And the family vacation consisted of a day in the nearest state park.
One day the father decided that he should purchase fire insurance. In those days, most of the companies that sold fire insurance had their own fire fighting departments. They would only fight fires on the property of their insurance customers, not those on the property of people who didn’t buy insurance from them. Also employees who worked for big corporations were all insured by the same company, and paid special low premiums because they were part of a group.
The family’s father tried to buy fire insurance from the company that covered the big corporation’s employees, but he was told that the premiums for single individuals were about three times as much as those for members of the group.
The family could not afford to pay so much of its income for fire insurance.
Then he tried to buy fire insurance from a company that said that because his house and garage were at the top of the hill, there was a higher than average risk of a fire caused by lightning. And because his house was surrounded by woods, it would be difficult to prevent a fire from destroying his property if it ever got started. They told him that he was a poor risk. They refused to sell him insurance because they wanted only people who had a low risk of damage by fire as customers.
There were other families who were either denied coverage, or offered fire insurance at premiums so high that they could not afford to pay them. They formed an informal association of the uninsured, and proposed that everyone should be taxed to finance a municipal fire fighting company, which would serve everyone who lived in their town.
But the citizens who already had fire insurance were afraid that the taxes to pay for the municipal fire department would cost more than their premiums did. They cried “socialism.” Because people were afraid of
anything that someone called “socialism,” the movement to develop a town fire department was defeated.
When a wild fire swept across the prairies and into the woods, the family did not have fire insurance. There was one company that fought fires for people that they did not insure, but they charged families who received their services the full cost of fighting the fire. The father knew that paying that much to put out the fire would bankrupt the family. So the father and the mother and the three children tried as best they could to prevent the fire from burning their house and garage. But the wind blew embers onto the roof, and there was not enough pressure in the water coming through the garden hose to quell the flames. It became apparent that the only hope of putting out the fire was to call in the fire fighting company.
But by then it was too late!
The family lost their home and business and everything else. Once financially independent, the family became dependent on charity.
Now Jesus used parables in his teaching. He told stories about things that were easy to understand in order to help his disciples see things that were difficult to comprehend and accept. He explained some of the parables, with statements of the form, “This is like that.”
In this parable, fire insurance is like health insurance; the linkage between fire insurance companies and fire fighting departments is like the connection between health insurance companies and “in network” care providers. The fire coverage available to employees of the big corporation is like employer-based group health insurance. And the reluctance of the father to seek professional fire fighting help is like the unwillingness of people to seek professional treatment before emergency care is required.
By the time the father called in the fire department, not only had the family’s house and garage been destroyed, but a raging inferno raced through the forest toward the rest of the town. Because the family did not call in help soon enough, in the end, half the town was burned to the ground. The destruction of the homes and businesses of other families is like an epidemic caused by the failure of one, or a few, patients to seek medical treatment earlier in the illness.
After half the town was destroyed, the people realized that protecting people’s homes from damage by fire is an obligation that all of us have for our neighbors, rather than a commodity to be purchased only by those who can afford it. They recognized that everyone benefits when the risk is shared, and all are protected. And so a municipal fire department was created.
And nobody ever again cried “socialism.”
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