Dear Editor:
I noted with dismay that "Mid-Missouri lawmakers call session a "success'" (News-Tribune, May 17). Absolutely, not! Their failure to act on Medicaid expansion, the most pressing human dignity legislation of this session, will mark the 2014 legislative session as callous, care-less, and unjust.
Because Senate and House leaders and many majority party legislators, were locked in ideological captivity, at least 300,000 vulnerable Missourians will continue to live sicker and die younger. Indeed, it is anticipated that 700 of our neighbors will die in the coming year for want of health coverage, which could have been provided had Medicaid expansion been approved. That's 12 to 15 deaths per week in this state. That's not "success" that's moral catastrophe!
I've spent much time at the Capitol this year, visiting with legislators, testifying in legislative hearings, and attending advocacy rallies. Indeed, I joined with 22 other clergy from across the state in an act of civil disobedience in the Senate Gallery on May 6. We witnessed to our faith by chanting ("Do Justice, Love Mercy, Expand Medicaid!"), by praying and by singing hymns. We engaged in this dramatic, prophetic action to make a critical point: Medicaid expansion is a moral imperative.
On May 16, the last day of the session, several of my clergy friends and I returned to the Senate Gallery for a silent prayer vigil of mourning for the suffering and death that will result from the injustice of legislative inaction on Medicaid expansion We noted with intense interest an inscription on the upper front wall of the Senate Chamber which reads: "nothing is politically right that is morally wrong." We were struck with the irony: Missouri's Senators see that inscription daily and daily ignore its ethical premise. Our Senators - and Representatives - would do well to engage in some serious soul-searching in the coming months.
Meanwhile, our clergy group will commit ourselves anew, as faith leaders, to move human dignity and justice to the center of public life in our state. Medicaid expansion remains a moral imperative!