Health care is a huge contributor to wealth disparity. Low income folks are more at risk for health problems, both physical and mental. This vulnerability can also severely decrease capacity to hold a job. Depression, anxiety, exasperation, and learned helplessness can grow unmanageable, all of which
further affect employability.
There is no fallback in times of emergency. No wiggle room for illness. The middle class pays for a broken leg by dipping into savings, and it can be a blow. But if you're poor and the paycheck runs out, that's it.
Treatable conditions are ignored, and more serious ones fester. Heaven forbid your child is born with a disability, or you have a parent with a chronic illness.
As a country, the health care for the nation's uninsured costs
~$125 billion every year, but with benefit cuts hitting the lower class the hardest, employee health care is difficult to come by. Approximately
one in five women go uninsured. In some states, a family of three must make less than
$5000 per year to be considered eligible for public health insurance.
Those that qualified for medical assistance while they were unemployed lose that aid once they are hired for even part time employment (with or without benefits). This forces folks to choose between earning an income and maintaining their prescribed medication. Medical fees are charged at a higher rate to uninsured individuals than those negotiated by insurance companies. Without a family doctor, ER expenses rack up. And then the debt collectors start to prowl. (for more:
Healthcare Reform)
It also costs time to be poor. A LOT of time. Two hours at the laundromat. Twenty minutes waiting for the bus. Then, the time on the bus: "'I ride the bus to get to work, '
Nicholas says. It takes an hour. 'If I could drive, it would take me 10 minutes.'"
Poverty costs 40 minutes to pay a basic utility bill because of money order lines. It costs four hours in the ER for strep throat instead of seeing a family doctor. And if you try to navigate the bureaucracy of social services systems, you're certain to invest some serious time there.
Lines for food, lines for paperwork, lines for health care, lines for shelters.
No sense in rushing. You will always just end up waiting. If time is money, then without money, you're double broke.
Don't ever have a family? Don't ever get sick? Don't ever make a mistake? Never have any rest or enjoyment? Be sufficiently miserable in penance for your lot?
, 46.2 million people live in poverty in the USA (15% of the population), representing an 18% increase since 2008. The challenges discussed here plunge families into a cycle of poverty. This legacy is passed on to subsequent generations that miss out on the accumulation of
On Fridays, BTSF offers links to other discussions about race & Christianity. It's an opportunity for you
Thought #1: Recognize that the rules are different for you. 
Despite the fact that privileged people have benefited from an unfair advantage in society, they are often preoccupied with being treated “fairly” in the context of reconciliation work. They believe that they have a right to be heard. They also believe they have the right to a clean slate; they don’t want past injustices (either individual or societal) to negatively affect the current reconciliation work. In addition, they believe that they have a right to be treated graciously; in other words, the oppressed person must refrain from sounding angry when expressing him or herself and must communicate in a way that is comforting to the privileged person.** If any of these “rights” are violated, privileged people often bolt from the reconciliation context.
For an interaction between the privileged and the oppressed to serve as a step toward overcoming years of injustice, it must first reverse the unjust and unequal power dynamics that have long fueled divisions between the privileged and the oppressed. After years of inequality, reconciliation often requires more than the establishment of equal status between the two groups. A further step is needed – one that requires that the privileged folks relinquish their high status and adopt a humble position that elevates and honors the oppressed people at great cost to the privileged folks. 
This is the second of a two-part series on the high cost of being poor in the United States. See part 1 for a discussion of the cost of food, housing, and the use of money itself...
