Designated Offering
Health Care for All (Oregon)
Each month, we designate a particular social service organization for financial support through special collections on Sundays. This August, our special offering goes to Health Care for All (Oregon).
It is often difficult to see the Kingdom of God at hand when watching the daily news.
Something as basic as making sure we are each taken care of when sick and kept healthy when well seems beyond our grasp. Instead, we are bombarded by a cacophony of reports that our healthcare system is failing us. You know the reports: rising pharmaceutical prices, increasing health insurance premiums, rumors that Medicare may become a voucher system, dismantling of the Affordable Care Act without an alternative, an uncertain future for those with pre-existing conditions, and a healthcare system with overall higher costs and poorer outcomes than those of other industrialized nations.
At primary risk are the most fragile among us: the poor and the elderly. As a society, we can do better.
For several years, our Church of the Good Samaritan has supported the efforts of Health Care for All Oregon (HCAO) to bring universal, accessible, affordable healthcare to all residents of Oregon. HCAO’s vision is for a system that is publicly funded (single payer) and privately delivered – an “Improved Medicare for All.”
HCAO is working to convince the State Legislature to take action on healthcare, and if they fail to do so by 2019, HCAO will mount a statewide initiative petition to have the issue placed on the ballot in 2020. There are already both a Task Force and a Work Group in the State Legislature researching and developing a cost analysis and funding plan. In addition, a strictly local group (Mid-Valley Health Care, a member organization of HCAO) is also developing a healthcare funding plan, which it will share with the groups in the Legislature.
HCAO is bringing hope and vision to a complex and difficult issue.
Make a designated offering
Please give prayerful consideration to this month’s designated offering. To participate, make out a check to Church of the Good Samaritan, write “designated offering” on the memo line, and place it in the plate during the Sunday services offertory (or mail it to our office). You can also use the “designated offering” envelope found in the back of each pew.
At the end of each month, we write a single check from Good Sam to the organization we’ve designated for our support. Thank you for helping to ensure that this valuable service can continue!