Christian Comment

Caroline is a nurse in Colorado, USA, and we are sometimes regaled with horror stories about the inadequacies of American healthcare. And I think thank God for the NHS.

Many of us have cause to be grateful to our health service because we have received treatment or undergone procedures that were necessary but would have been cripplingly, even prohibitively expensive if we'd had to pay for them.

Private health insurance is all very well but there comes a point where it loses interest and that can be where it is most needed. Perhaps because for most of us the NHS has always been there we take it for granted, failing to realise what a treasure it is, but there are dark forces seeking to undermine and nibble away at it because the nation's health is seen as an opportunity to make megabucks.

St Paul tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil, and the health of the many should never be allowed to be subordinated to the financial profits of the few.

When working briefly in the USA some years ago I visited an elderly couple – one had severe heart problems and the other terminal cancer.

Although they had taken care with health insurance, it no longer covered their expensive medication and they told me, "We just hope we die before our money runs out."

There must be something wrong with a wealthy country that will leave its sick and needy people stranded.

Socialism is an unfashionable word these days but this isn't about socialism, it's about civilisation, and it's about a basic active concern for the welfare of all that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

'People before profits' is a slogan I have seen daubed in several different locations in recent months. I find that has a very strong resonance with the kind of thing the Jesus I find in the gospels might have said – for him the need of the individual human being always took precedence over whatever system or circumstance was impairing them.