Health Care Reform a Moral Imperative, But Must Cover Immigrants, Too (Archbishop Wuerl)

As Congress returns to work, the debate on health care reform surely will focus on the political, technical and economic repercussions of various proposals. What cannot get lost in this debate, however, are the moral implications. Health care is about life and death, who can take their children to the doctor and who cannot, who can afford decent medical coverage and who is left to fend for themselves. Because health care reform has real consequences -- literally life and death -- decisions must be evaluated through a prism of fundamental ethical principles to see how they will impact the dignity and value of each human life.

In some areas there seems to be consensus. Most people agree that it is not right that tens of millions of Americans lack basic health care coverage and many more risk losing what they have as costs rise. All of us should be able to acknowledge that a society that does not ensure basic health care for its people is failing in a fundamental way. There also seems to be general agreement that we can do better. Our nation has the capacity and the resources to ensure that all have access to health care coverage. Arguably, we have the best health care in the world. However, it serves too few and often costs too much. We need to find practical ways to see that no one lacks access to basic health care.

As part of living out the Gospel challenge to heal, the Catholic community knows firsthand the impact of the current crisis. The Catholic Health Association alone represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals and health care systems across the United States. In fact, the nation's 600 Catholic hospitals care for one-sixth of all hospital patients in the United States. Add onto that the more than 1,000 nursing homes, neighborhood clinics and other health ministries, such as the Spanish Catholic Center's medical clinic right here in the nation's capital, as well as the outreach by thousands of parishes nationwide to those in need.

We offer a safety net for many who fall through the huge cracks of a failing health care system. The uninsured find their way to our emergency rooms, shelters and clinics where they know they will not be turned away.

We teach that health care is a basic human right, an essential safeguard of human life and dignity. Here in the Archdiocese of Washington, the Catholic community serves nearly 600,000 people in our hospitals and other health care facilities and over 120,000 persons through Catholic Charities, including its Family Centers, and even more through parishes. It is this direct, frontline experience that has guided the Church's efforts for decades to expand and improve health care coverage in our nation and our work for genuine health care reform today.

Health care reform especially needs to protect those at the beginning of life and at its end -- the most vulnerable and the voiceless. It is essential that reform include long-standing and widely supported federal restrictions on abortion funding and mandates and uphold existing conscience protections for health care providers. Abandoning current federal policies on abortion funding and conscience protection, thereby forcing people to pay for or participate in abortion would be morally reprehensible and a repudiation of the understanding of individual freedom and the rights of conscience that goes back to the American Revolution.

Universal coverage should be universal, including everyone. Health care reform cannot leave people out because of pre-existing conditions, chronic illnesses, their place of work or because they cannot afford insurance. Reform should not leave people out because of where they come from or when they arrived here. The United Stated Conference of Catholic Bishops, following the Gospel mandate to care for the "least of these," urges us to look at health care from the bottom up. A particular gauge against which to measure true universal coverage would be how reform treats the immigrants in our midst who contribute their labor and taxes to our nation, but are at risk of being left out of health care reform.

We need also to find effective ways to bring together public, private and non-profit health care actors in ways that harness their strengths, overcome their shortcomings and, particularly with religious partners, respect their mission and identity. Our political leadership faces both a challenge and an opportunity. We hope and we also pray that all in this debate will remember that what is really at stake are the lives, dignity and health care of all our people. Securing health care that protects the life and dignity of all is a moral imperative and an urgent national priority.

Archbishop Wuerl:

We offer a safety net for many who fall through the huge cracks of a failing health care system. The uninsured find their way to our emergency rooms, shelters and clinics where they know they will not be turned away.
We teach that health care is a basic human right, an essential safeguard of human life and dignity. Here in the Archdiocese of Washington, the Catholic community serves nearly 600,000 people in our hospitals and other health care facilities and over 120,000 persons through Catholic Charities, including its Family Centers, and even more through parishes. It is this direct, frontline experience that has guided the Church's efforts for decades to expand and improve health care coverage in our nation and our work for genuine health care reform today.
So, what are some of the basics of health care reform?
(snip)
Universal coverage should be universal, including everyone. Health care reform cannot leave people out because of pre-existing conditions, chronic illnesses, their place of work or because they cannot afford insurance. Reform should not leave people out because of where they come from or when they arrived here. The United Stated Conference of Catholic Bishops, following the Gospel mandate to care for the "least of these," urges us to look at health care from the bottom up. A particular gauge against which to measure true universal coverage would be how reform treats the immigrants in our midst who contribute their labor and taxes to our nation, but are at risk of being left out of health care reform.

Pope Pius XI:

Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.

Pope John Paul II:

In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called "Welfare State". This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the "Social Assistance State". Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.100
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need. One thinks of the condition of refugees, immigrants, the elderly, the sick, and all those in circumstances which call for assistance, such as drug abusers: all these people can be helped effectively only by those who offer them genuine fraternal support, in addition to the necessary care.

Thanks, Archbishop, I think I'll stay with authentic Catholic Social Doctrine.

Dear Mr. Wuerl:

In your lengthy statements about the "moral imperative" to provide health care to all, you have overlooked one of the most clear and compelling statements on this subject from the New Testament.

When the Good Samaritan came upon the injured traveler on the side of the road, he didn't use a cell phone to call 911, and he didn't wait for a couple of Roman EMTs to come in an ambulance to take the guy away. He loaded the guy onto his own donkey, walked him to a nearby inn, and paid the innkeeper himself.

Let me ask you the same question put to Jesus Christ by a Jewish scholar that prompted Christ to recount this story: "Who is my neighbor?"

Any "Catholic" prelate who calls on his flock to render unto Caesar to do God's work is a heretic and a fraud.

Sincerely,

Alberta's Child

Dear Catholic leaders;

Please study the Catholic doctrine of “Subsidiarity” before blindly accepting or endorsing any more expansion of government.
The Catholic Church used to fear, and warn against, the ever increasing power of the State over our lives. Your Diocese, through the Arch Bishop, has made an appeal for covering illegal aliens through any health care proposal.

What are the “unintended consequences” of such a policy?

1.) More illegal aliens come to this country.
2.) The countries, from which they flee, continue to live under despots and poverty, since the more productive members are given even more reason to leave.
3.) The U.S. Government is further bankrupted, by the enormous cost of this crazy policy.

Further to the point, any government plan large enough and strong enough to cover everyone, is also large enough and powerful enough to DENY coverage. The Consequences of Socialized Medicine WILL BE:

1.) Denial of care to the elderly.
2.) Denial of care to the disabled.
3.) Tax payer financed abortion.

Governments are tools of man, and are subject to the failures and short comings of human beings. At least, with the current system, there are checks and balances to keep insurance companies in line and, also a much better opportunity to keep the existing government programs in line. The current proposals, in Congress, remove ALL Court jurisdiction from “denial of care” decisions made by the government.

The leadership of the Catholic Church is, sadly, incredibly naïve to the point of embarrassment, on the subjects of basic economics and the eugenics-based culture of death that we live in, today.

I am a very frustrated Catholic, upset with your Diocese, and the Church in general, due to your lap dog support of an all-Powerful, and obviously EVIL State.

“A Government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”

Please do not embarrass Catholics, any further, by any more support for the tyrannical proposals coming out of Washington, at present.

Sincerely;

Just an idea, for those who might like to tell the Bishops that they are in error!

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