What did charitable entities ever do before they hooked up to federal and state money?
I feel very bad for them, but as a Catholic, I think it is the height of naiveté to think that you can collect tax money and that there will be no strings attached.
I’d much rather the Church be able to perform it’s ministry without having to compromise.
This article does not say anything about the hospitals getting public funding. They should refuse to comply and dare them to shut the doors of hospitals where 1 out 4 beds in hospitals exist. You want a healthcare crisis. I’ll give you one. What are they going to do, pull a Hugo Chavez? I dare them.
Caring for the sick is one of the corporal works of mercy.
Hospitals permit the Church to care for the sick in more than a trivial way.
Unfortunately, something 40% of the health care economy is controlled by government at various levels. What is naive is to think that one can participate in this industry, give care to the entire range of the population, and avoid government money.
What do you do for a senior citizen who shows up at the door with Medicare? A poor person with Medicaid?
“What did charitable entities ever do before they hooked up to federal and state money?”
They didn’t provide heart bypass surgery. Or transplants. Or high-tech cancer treatments. Or use MRIs and CT-Scans for diagnostics.
There are two sides to this sword. Fifty years ago, health care spending amounted to a few percent of GDP. Today, it’s 14% or 16% and still growing. Even if we were to streamline administrative costs, squeeze out costs through tort reform, etc., it's still be at around 10% - 12% of a 14 trillion dollar economy. That's still well over a trillion dollars.
Also, in absolute terms, our per capita GDP has grown significantly in the last half-century. Thus, we’re not only spending a greater percentage of our GDP on health care, but that percentage is from a much, much bigger pie.
That growth in the health care sector has enabled doctors and hospitals to care for the sick - a basic corporal work of mercy - far more efficaciously than ever before.
But it has also created an industry that’s one-seventh or one-sixth of our entire economy. And the society at large has voted for politicians who have deeply enmeshed government in the provision of the funding for these services. And that government involvement has helped drive those costs.
I have always had a prejudice on this issue. I like that hospitals and doctors can cure more folks, help them live better, longer, healthier (or at least better at ameliorating the effects of illness) than ever before.
This past year, my own prejudices deepened as my younger son was diagnosed with a serious illness. The medicine of 50 years ago likely would not have been sufficient to save his life and/or his long-term health.
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