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ACADEMIA Letters The Right to Oxygen: a Universal Right. Theologizing an Experience of COVID-19 from a Latinx Point of View Dempsey Rosales Acosta, University of St. Thomas 1. Methodological premise The present reflection is the result of my first-hand experience of being sick with COVID19, i.e., diagnosed with COVID Pneumonia (COVID Hypoxia), and the personal theological reflection that emerged from the practical experience of it. In other words, the concrete experience of being a COVID patient already has an inherent theological experience embedded within that helps to create a two-way interconnection between the theology, as a theoretical and speculative thinking process along with the pragmatic experience of a patient in the praxis. It is a reflective approach that moves from practice to theology, going back again to practice in a dialectical movement.[1] The COVID experience, therefore, becomes a theological space (locus theologicus) in which it is possible to experience God and theologically reflect upon a practical aspect of life[2] ฀in the praxis฀ that can lend influence to our pastoral and theological points of views regarding our Latinx communities in the United States. The inter dialogical approach between experience and theology becomes the basic methodological platform of this current reflection that can be classified in the field of “practical theology.” Following this line of reasoning, this reflection presents as its basic methodological phase the concrete experiences of the author as a COVID-19 patient, namely, the individual paradigm of the practical theology.[3] Consequently, the first-person singular pronoun will be used during the exposition of the experiential facts ฀i.e., COVID symptoms, experiences of pain, breathing problems, hospitalization, medications, healthcare resources, etc.฀ and as it is also based upon my personal experience of faith, the reflection is intertwined with the “personal story” of the event that is presented from an inductive standpoint.[4] 2. Paying for Oxygen to Breathe Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Dempsey Rosales Acosta, dradempsey@yahoo.com Citation: Rosales Acosta, D. (2021). The Right to Oxygen: a Universal Right. Theologizing an Experience of COVID-19 from a Latinx Point of View. Academia Letters, Article 1540. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1540. 1 I was hospitalized from 4/10 until 4/18 of 2021 with COVID-19 Pneumonia (Hypoxia). I received the proper treatments of Plasma and Remdesivir. When I was finishing my stay at the hospital, the staff began to discuss the logistics for my continued treatment from home. The essential element needed was the oxygen supply (4 cylinders and a concentrator). The experience of getting the oxygen home concretely showed me how our healthcare system and society in general foster discrimination through mutually reinforcing inequitable systems. While I was at the hospital and preparing to go home, I was told that I needed to deal directly with the delivery of medical supplies to my home for my ongoing oxygen needs after my hospital release. I was told that my insurance plan did not cover the ongoing oxygen supplies and that I needed to pay out of pocket before its delivery to my house for the three months’ supply according to the hospital recommended instructions. I ended up paying $ 319 for oxygen. It truly hit me. I was paying for a machine to concentrate the “oxygen” from the “air” so I can breathe better during the time that I needed it the most. Throughout my hospitalization, I was going through liters upon liters of oxygen with insurance coverage, but now I needed to continue the same treatment for a period of time at my home. The shocking part of it is that the so-called “protection” of health insurance was totally useless. What would happen if I couldn’t pay for the oxygen then? Why is something so essential as oxygen not covered by the insurance when you have a COVID patient in need of it? As I began to realize at that moment how privileged I am to have the money to pay for oxygen for my treatment at home, I thought what would happen if I would be suffering the same illness without any of the aforementioned privileges? What if I would be equally sick but without documents, uninsured, or without enough money for the “oxygen” instead of food? The answer to these questions deeply terrified me, because both the undocumented and uninsured persons in our country are not immune to COVID -19. Then I felt empathetic and close to all the COVID patients who are undocumented and/or uninsured, especially with the Latinx communities. According to the official report of the office of Health Policy of ASPE, issued on February 11, 2021, 30 million United Sates “residents” lacked health insurance in the first half of 2020, according to newly released estimates from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS).[5] Of course, this data is based on the “residents” documented individual, but even then such information only offers a glimpse of the gravity of the situation when we consider that the official statistics do not offer precise data because the undocumented and uninsured persons are not part of the survey. According to the statistics and data offered by ASPE, the Latinxs occupied the second tier after the American Indian group. The ASPE health issue brief states: “Individuals who identified as Hispanic or Latino had the second-highest rate of uninsured individuals, with 32 percent in 2010. From 2010 to 2019, the rate of uninsured Hispanic Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Dempsey Rosales Acosta, dradempsey@yahoo.com Citation: Rosales Acosta, D. (2021). The Right to Oxygen: a Universal Right. Theologizing an Experience of COVID-19 from a Latinx Point of View. Academia Letters, Article 1540. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1540. 2 individuals decreased by nearly one-third, but at 22 percent in 2019 it is still almost 2.5 times the rate for White individuals (whose uninsured percentage dropped from 14 to 9).”[6] The official percentage for the uninsured Latinxs during 2019-2020 is 22%.[7] It is important to remember that this data only reflects the official residents who participated in the surveys. Most likely, the real current numbers are much higher and the implications regarding the access to healthcare and COVID treatment since 2020 until now are devastating for the lack of access to treatment, medications, and the unreasonable financial burden of the medical costs for the uninsured. Some families are placed in the inhuman position of deciding between getting COVID treatment (i.e., medication and oxygen) and living expenses like food and utilities. The bureaucratic practice of getting the oxygen by itself is a discriminatory practice that creates and reinforces inequality based on the factors of health insurance and of course, money. The most ironic aspect of this socio-economic discrimination is that it is based on the “universal right of oxygen” that exists for free in the very air that we breathe. It is important to clarify the inequitable cost of oxygen for COVID patients is the result of a structural discriminatory practice that per se favors those who have the money to pay outside an insurance plan versus those who cannot afford it. This structural discrimination intertwined with structural racism also implicates the socio-economic status of the minorities who are by default, steadily segregated. Consequently, the healthcare system of the United States systematically reinforces, allows, and encourages unequal distribution and usage of health resources when they are most needed. Oxygen is all around us, and this common access to it makes us forget how essential it is to the point that we take it for granted. But when a patient needs to pay for a “universal right” or for a resource that is God-given because a man-made healthcare system declares that cannot be covered for a specific insurance plan as a way to make money from patients in need, then we are dealing with a “universal social injustice.” Such a structural discriminatory system manifested in health care inequalities is both explicit and complicit among all countries in the global community, as one can see on the recent news regarding the discriminatory practices in the use of oxygen for patients in India.[8] Oxygen for medical purposes has been acknowledged as a universal and essential right but even today among the so-called “first world countries” it remains as a commodity and a current healthcare inequitable issue for our communities. The inequality created for the use of oxygen for patients becomes even a more pressing issue from the theological point of view already described from Gen 2:7. It is a divine gift from God who blows his neshamah of life into the human being. This universal truth revealed in the Biblical text now has become perverted for the sake of taking profit from those who need the oxygen the most: the COVID-19 patients. A universal human gift has become commercialized Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Dempsey Rosales Acosta, dradempsey@yahoo.com Citation: Rosales Acosta, D. (2021). The Right to Oxygen: a Universal Right. Theologizing an Experience of COVID-19 from a Latinx Point of View. Academia Letters, Article 1540. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1540. 3 to make a profit from those who can pay, building a situation into a systemic structure that creates injustice and illustrates a structural system that functions as if God does not exist, like an illustration of Hugo Grotius’ statement: “etsi Deus non daretur” (as if God does not exist).[9] If we talk about the right to life, essentially, we need to talk about the right to oxygen. A person cannot live without oxygen, even more so when the person is a COVID patient and every single breath is crucial to keep the proper levels of oxygen to sustain the bodily functions. This point is crucial and made evident by the COVID-19 pandemic. My firsthand experience as a patient makes me keenly aware of the implications of having access to one of the most essential elements of life that each human being must-have. Not providing oxygen to a patient because of the lack of money or insurance plans becomes a sin that cries out to God with the same intensity of the blood of Abel that reached out for the divine justice (Gen 4:10). [1] Cf. Gijsbert D. J. Dingemans, “Practical Theology in the Academy: A Contemporary Overview,” The Journal of Religion, vol. 76, no. 1 (1996): 83; Don S. Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 5-6. [2] Cf. Henning Luther, Religion und Alltag, in Bausteine zu einer praktischen Theologie des Subjekts (Stuttgart: Radius Verlag, 1992), 246. [3] Cf. Gijsbert D. J. Dingemans, “Practical Theology in the Academy: A Contemporary Overview,” 86-87. [4] Cf. Riet Bons-Storm, “The importance of life and faith histories in the methodology of Practical Theology,” Hervormde Teologiese Studies, vol. 58, no. 2 (2009): 27-28.3132. [5] Cf. Kenneth Finegold, Ann Conmy, Rose C. Chu, Arielle Bosworth, and Benjamin D. Sommers, Trends in the U. S. Uninsured Population, 2010-2020. Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Office of Health Policy. (Issue Brief: February 11, 2021), 1. Accessed 4/25/2021: https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/265041/trends-in-theus-uninsured.pdf [6] Kenneth Finegold, et al., Trends in the U. S. Uninsured Population, 20102020, 5. Accessed 4/25/2021: https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/265041/trends-in-the-usuninsured.pdf [7] Cf. Kenneth Finegold, et al., Trends in the U. S. Uninsured Population, 2010-2020, 5-6. Accessed 4/25/2021: https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/265041/trendsin-the-us-uninsured.pdf [8] See the article of the Indian Express of 4/23/2021: Rajasthan govt alleges discrimination in oxygen, Remdesivir supply, urges Centre to allocate proportionately “In several states where active cases are less, more liquid oxygen and Remdesivir have been allocated as compared to Rajasthan, Gehlot said. Accessed on 4/24/2021: Rajasthan govt alleges discrimination in oxygen, Remdesivir supply, urges Centre to allocate proportionately | India News,The Indian Express [9] Hugo Grotius, De Iure Belli ac Pacis. Edited by P. C. Molhuysen (New Jersy, Clark, 1625, 2005), Prolegomena, n. 11. (page 7). Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Dempsey Rosales Acosta, dradempsey@yahoo.com Citation: Rosales Acosta, D. (2021). The Right to Oxygen: a Universal Right. Theologizing an Experience of COVID-19 from a Latinx Point of View. Academia Letters, Article 1540. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL1540. 4