Health-care option: a Mennonite plan for mutual aid
Christian Century, Sept 22, 2009 by Amy Frykholm
WHEN JUANITA NUNEZ and her husband, Eligio, copastors of a small Mennonite congregation in Apopka, Florida, were involved in a serious car accident in 2006, Juanita Nunez immediately worried about something other than her health. She worried because the couple did not have health insurance.
Mennonite pastors Constanzo and Marisela Aguirre also know the financial dread of having a serious injury or illness. When they decided to become copastors of a Mennonite congregation in Aurora, Illinois, they had to give up health insurance, knowing that the small congregation, made up mostly of recent immigrants, could not provide it. They decided to take the risk.
But the Nunezes, the Aguirres and other Mennonite pastors might be able to find a solution to their health-insurance problems in an insurance plan for all clergy subsidized by the entire Mennonite Church USA. At a time when the national debate on health-care reform has become a variation of “What’s in it for me?” the Mennonites are considering a plan that calls on all Mennonites to sacrifice for the sake of the needs of the whole church.
MCUSA churches have until October 1 to decide if they will participate in the plan. Organizers say they need 80 percent participation by the denomination’s 939 churches for the plan to work. It is an ambitious goal and not an easy sell.
Compared to the national problem of 46 million Americans without health insurance, the Mennonite clergy’s problem might seem insignificant. The denomination has fewer than 100 pastors without health insurance. But the attempt to ensure that all Mennonite pastors have health insurance regardless of salary or the financial status of their congregation presents a microcosm of the larger health-care debate: Are the wealthy willing to pay more to ensure that everyone has health insurance? In this case, the question michigan auto insurance quotes is: Will larger churches be willing to subsidize smaller ones so that all Mennonite pastors can have heath insurance?
The plan under consideration is called the Corinthian Plan, a reference to 2 Corinthians 8:14, in which Paul urges that the abundance of some should be used to provide for the needs of others. (“In turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality.”) Under the plan, every pastor will receive essentially the same coverage–with a range of choices for deductibles–and larger and wealthier congregations will subsidize smaller congregations in order to make premiums affordable for all.
Keith Harder, architect of the Corinthian Plan and the person who has taken on the task of explaining it to congregations, has said it is “an expression of mutual aid as much as an insurance plan.”
Of the 939 MCUSA congregations, about 8 percent (or about 75) have pastors who have no insurance. In 60 to 70 percent of churches (roughly 610 congregations), pastors’ health-insurance needs are provided by the pastor’s spouse, through another job or through the direct purchase of a policy with no help from the church. The remaining 20 to 30 percent of churches (or about 235) provide pastors with insurance, often through Mennonite Mutual Aid (MMA), an agency associated with the Mennonite Church USA.
The Corinthian Plan asks congregations to pay $10 per year per attendee of their church. This pool of money would subsidize insurance for ministers in small congregations
Nov 4, 2009
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