“Some Big Banks Can Get Bailout”: A Baptist Pastor Asks Why the Poor Can’t Get the Same Health Care

• Rev Dr Devon Dick preached at the Bustamante Hospital for Children’s 60th anniversary service
• He said the poor deserve the same quality of health care as the well-off
• He contrasted bailouts and waivers for big companies with resistance to spending on the poor
• He asked why a promise of free health care for under-18s had not been fulfilled

Rev Dr Devon Dick, pastor of Boulevard Baptist Church in St Andrew, has called on Jamaicans to fight for poorer people to receive the same quality of health care as the well-off, the Jamaica Observer reported.

Dick was preaching a sermon titled “Faith Over Fear” at the Bustamante Hospital for Children’s 60th anniversary church service. “It’s not only the pastor who has good contacts at the hospital and can get through quickly and adequately, but all God’s children, and we must fight for them,” he said.

He criticised the way public money is shared. Recalling a remark by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding that proposals to help the poor are often attacked as a drain on the budget, Dick said: “But you know, some big banks can get bailout, some foreign companies can get waivers and they say, ‘oh, that is good for the economy because you’re gonna get trickle down’, and all that really trickle down is a little drip for true — drip, drip, drip, drip.” He asked why a pronouncement he attributed to former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, that children under 18 should receive free health care, had not come to pass.

Pointing to Gaza, where he said about 100 truckloads of supplies were needed but only 10 were being sent, he said it meant “10 people have to fight for what is adequate for one.” Quoting “God is our refuge and strength”, he said some battles are not worth fighting, but “sometimes we must fight especially on behalf of the less fortunate, the oppressed.” Errol Greene, regional director of the South East Regional Health Authority, also spoke at the service.

Dick’s sermon is about how a country spends its money: bailouts and tax waivers for large firms on one side, and hospital access for poor families on the other. Health care is part of what makes a place liveable. Families choosing where to live, and retirees returning from abroad, weigh how close they are to a well-run hospital. Investment in public hospitals such as the Bustamante Hospital for Children benefits every community it serves, and the church’s call for fair access is a call to spread that benefit to people who cannot pay for private care.

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