By Chuck Warpehoski

Cover the Uninsured Week hits close to me, because I’ve been there.

In 2001-2002, my wife, Nancy, did a year of volunteer service through Lutheran Volunteer Corps. While volunteer service is a great way to learn how to live on the cheap and to explore issues of faith, justice, and simplicity, it doesn’t provide you with a financial cushion for when you leave the program.

So when arrived in Ann Arbor, money was tight. We some savings, but no jobs and no health insurance.

My first job was as a temp worker in the U.M. Hospital. I was a disposable employee, and as such, I wasn’t given insurance coverage.

On my second day on the job I saw a notice about a speech U-M president Mary Sue Coleman gave about the need to fix the healthcare crisis, and I remember thinking “you can start with your own employees.”

Then, as now, I biked to work. One day I took a bad tumble on my bike and banged up my arm pretty bad, and I wondered if I had done serious damage.

I remember going through my options. Without health insurance, I could afford to pay for a visit to the doctor, but then one of two things would likely happen. On the one hand, the doctors would say that everything was fine, just let it heal. Then I’d be out the money I paid for the appointment and no better off.

On the other hand, the doctor could have told me that I needed some sort of treatment. But without health insurance, it would be a treatment I probably couldn’t afford. So once again, I’d be out the money I paid for the appointment and no better off.

These are the kinds of decisions people without insurance have to make every day. Like I was, many of them are working hard, but they can’t afford coverage and don’t get it at work.

And now, like me, my sister is getting ready to leave the academic world and go into the work force, and she’s worried about getting health coverage after she graduates.

Last Monday, I attended an interfaith luncheon for Cover the Uninsured Week. There, Rabbi Steve Gutow of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs noted that even though America spends twice what our Britain does per capita for healthcare, our citizens over the age of 55 are much sicker than their British counterparts. The difference, he said, is that so many of our citizens go for periods without health insurance.

Just like I did.

Just like my sister might.

At that same luncheon Greg Roberts of the Governor’s office of Faith Based Initiatives told us that the question of covering the uninsured is a question of choices and priorities. He compared it to the story of the Good Samaritan, and asked us would we choose to walk by the suffering person or to help lift them out of their suffering.

(As a side note, Imam Hassan Qazwini of the Islamic Center of America also spoke, and he put the choices even more bluntly. He pointed out we could make tremendous progress caring for our countries sick and poor with what we’ve spend on military “foreign adventures.” The war in Iraq has cost almost $ 420 billion–that would pay for a lot of health coverage.)

This is a situation we can address. Other industrialized countries have done it. Canada, France, and England, just to pick three examples, all provide universal health coverage and all use different models for how to get there.

And if they can do it, certainly the United States can too.

All it takes is the political will, and it’s up to us to create that.