Huntingdon Meeting gathers at 10:30 Sunday morning at the Humanities Lounge on Juniata College's campus through the winter months. In the spring and summer the Smithfield gazebo overlooking the Juniata River is used again when the weather is good.. New attenders are very welcome. Directions to either location can be obtained by contacting Larry or Ginny Mutti at 814-669-4038, or leave a message on the Meeting's phone, 669-4127, and they will call you  back..

Huntingdon Meeting has been a formal meeting under the care of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting only since 1996 although its handful of members had been together as a community for years.

Huntingdon Meeting Minute on Universal Health Care

Huntingdon Monthly Meeting

Huntingdon,PA

approved 8/30/98

Quakerism arose out of the belief that within every individual lives a divine spark. Not only can

each person, then, come to hear and know the will of God, but individuals can and must become

the instruments of God's work on earth. All persons must be valued and no person must be

disrespected.

These beliefs led early Quakers to refuse to give special consideration to royalty, to become

active in prison reform, and to treat all customers fairly and equally. In later years they led

Quakers to be early and active proponents in the abolition of slavery and the empowerment of

women. These same beliefs lead us today to urge a major overhaul of the health care system in

the United States.

None of us can hope to live and serve to our fullest potential if we lack the ability to care for

ourselves and for our health. Poor health becomes both a physical and spiritual impediment,

drawing our attention away from productive lives, from lives of service and lives of devotion. It

is imperative to the accomplishment of divine will that all of us have access to timely and high-

quality health care, in a way that doesn't act to discourage us from seeking that help and in a way

that respects the value of each of us and doesn't draw distinctions among us.

The current health care system in America fails to deliver that quality care in a uniformly

accessible and respectful way. Many individuals simply don't have or cannot get adequate

coverage because of insufficient means or a prior health condition that makes them undesirable

insurance risks. Many individuals, while covered for catastrophic illness are deterred from

making an initial or routine visit to see a doctor because of the high deductible that is a part of

their policy, a deductible that may ask the individual to decide between seeking health care and

other basic necessities for themselves or their families. Many individuals simply don't seek

health care at all.

These characteristics of the American health care system are neither efficient of human and

economic resources nor egalitarian, and are wholly inconsistent to a country that claims to offer

equally to all of its residents the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These

inequities and inadequacies in our current health care system are particularly unacceptable in a

country that has the resources to support an enormous leisure and entertainment industry and the

world's largest military budget and purports to offer the highest quality of life to its citizens.

Tinkering with the existing complicated system of non-profit and for-profit hospitals and

employer-provided, state-supported, and individually-purchased health care plans standing

alongside one another is not going to deliver a result that serves the health of the people of this

nation uniformly well or in a way that is either efficient or egalitarian. Only universal access to

health care, made available without regard to economic status and time or place of birth offers

the possibility of each of us becoming true servants of the divine. Such universal care must be

simple and accessible, not confusing, competitive and encouraging of an attitude that measures

the worth of individuals differently. We must as a nation aim for a health delivery system that

does not make the first interaction that people experience as they enter a doctor's office or

hospital be a request for one's insurance card.

We believe that the federal government has an essential role to play in making quality, universal

and non-discriminatory health care available to all. Specifically, we urge Congress to enact

legislation which would create a single payer, universal health care system financed by

progressive taxation.