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| Marian Wright Edelman |
HARTFORD (06/27/2007) -- In her address to General Synod 26 on Monday, Children's Defense Fund founder and President Marian Wright Edelman urged the expansion of federal health care programs for children to make certain that no child would lack medical care in the United States. Citing statistics that included the birth of a child without health insurance every 46 seconds, and telling horrifying stories of children dying when they could not obtain medical treatment and medication, Edelman asked why the nation has failed to do the right and the smart thing.
"I cannot bear the fact," she mourned, "that there are children who are dying and suffering every day because this country, unlike every other industrialized nation, does not provide them with the basic health care."
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She told three stories of children who had died of the lack of resources for their care. Twelve-year-old Diamante died after twenty-six dentists refused to accept Medicaid and pull an absessed tooth at a cost of $80. After the infection reached his brain, he endured two operations and seven weeks in the hospital at the cost of $250,000, which did not save his life. A few weeks later two children died: six year old Alex of another absessed tooth, and young boy whose cancer went untreated for four months due to Medicaid administrative delays.
According to Edelman, full coverage for America's children would cost $70 billion. Legislators, however, have said to the Children's Defense Fund they will be fortunate to appropriate $50 billion, which will exclude 4 to 5 million children. "I don't think it's right to leave 5 million children behind."
"The Children's Defense Fund wants health coverage for every single person in America, but children can't wait."
Edelman decried the pipeline into which so many poor and minority children enter: Cradle to Prison to Death. Poor health care, zero-tolerance discipline, the lack of role models, and an educational system that doesn't believe it can teach them create the pipeline. Behavior that once would have been handled in the school is increasingly referred to police and courts, where they may be charged as adults.
"The only thing we will guarantee to every child," said Edelman, "is a jail or a detention cell after they get into trouble. States spend almost three times more on average per prisoner than for public schools. You and I have to build a movement to change those investment priorities, because that's just plain wrong."
She urged the reshaping of communities and families to better care for and raise the nation's children. "What's wrong with our children is adults. They do what we do, and they desperately need us to stand up and speak to them." Parents who use drugs, steal, and fail to support their children and communities will raise children who do the same.
Musician Ken Medema delivered a powerful tribute to Marian Wright Edelman in his musical response, whose refrain "We will stand up, even when we want to sit down; we will stand up until the job is done," slowly drew every soul in the assembly to their physical or spiritual feet. After hugging Medema, Edelman emotionally thanked the UCC crowd for standing, and urged them to continue the struggle until the job is done.
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| Edelman thanks the standing assembly |
