When vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, R-Wis., gave an address at Georgetown University this past spring, more than 80 faculty members signed a letter challenging his claim that his budget proposal had been informed by Catholic social teaching.
The faculty members could not fathom how a proposal that checked the growth of the federal government could be consistent with their myopic view of the Church’s social teaching.
A similarly narrow reading of Catholic social teaching, one that erroneously equates it with social-welfare state policies, has also been evident in the ongoing debate about Obamacare.
For example, both the Catholic Health Association and leaders of the recent “Nuns on the Bus” tour have intimated that a federally controlled universal health-care system is part and parcel of Catholic social teaching.
To bolster this argument, they and others have pointed out that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been an advocate of universal health care for decades and that the Compendium on Social Doctrine of the Church mentions our Christian obligation to care for those without health care.
While these assertions are both true, it is quite a stretch to equate the Church’s concern that the poor have access to adequate health care with support for Obamacare.
It is even more of a stretch to argue that Obamacare is consistent with a fully integrated understanding of Catholic social thought.
Just like the Georgetown professors who took Ryan to task, those who claim Obamacare is a natural outgrowth of Catholic social thought tend to reach their conclusion by focusing on an extremely simplistic reading of just one aspect of Catholic social teaching, namely the preferential option we should exhibit toward the poor.
The Church describes this preferential option in its Compendium, indicating that “the poor, the marginalized and in all cases those whose living conditions interfere with their proper growth should be the focus of particular concern.”
While it is clear that care for the poor must be of particular concern for Catholics, the Compendium does not maintain that this must be done through the federal government via ever-expanding social-welfare programs.
In addition, there are other aspects of the Church’s social teaching that must be considered when evaluating programs such as Obamacare.
If we evaluate Obamacare in light of the full scope of Catholic social teaching, it fails to hold up to scrutiny.
The cornerstone of Catholic social teaching is the recognition of the equal dignity of all people.
The Compendium teaches that it is “necessary that public authorities keep careful watch, so that restrictions placed on freedom or any onus placed on personal activity will never become harmful to personal dignity.” Yet Obamacare violates this core principle with the “contraception mandate” that requires everyone to subsidize the universal provision of “free” abortifacients, birth control and sterilizations.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson coined the immortal phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to represent the unalienable rights bestowed upon us by our Creator, rights that should be protected by our government.
Unfortunately, the life part — the most fundamental of the three — will be eroded by Obamacare, not only through the mandate, but also by federal tax dollars indirectly subsidizing abortion-covering plans in the soon-to-be-created Obamacare health exchanges.
Far from being consistent with Church teaching, Obamacare, in which we are compelled to participate in life-destroying activities, represents a clear affront to Catholic social teaching.
But even if Obamacare were to be stripped of the mandate and the abortion coverage, it would still not be in the clear with Catholic social teaching.
Catholic social teaching upholds the principle of subsidiarity, something that Obamacare does not. This principle requires that one should try to accomplish a task at the most immediate level of society.
For example, if effective child rearing can be done best in the context of a family, one should not delegate the role of child rearing to the state.
The Compendium warns against the danger of not following this principle: “Experience shows that the denial of subsidiarity, or its limitation in the name of an alleged democratization or equality of all members of society, limits and sometimes even destroys the spirit of freedom and initiative.”
Obamacare, in which the federal government decides what health insurance is appropriate for all citizens, as well as how it will be delivered, is a clear violation of this principle.
Under Obamacare, federal bureaucrats are deciding and will continue to decide what coverage limits will be acceptable, what treatments must be included at no cost — contraception, abortifacients, etc. — and what treatments will eventually be denied.
Rather than encouraging states or local groups or communities to develop insurance plans that best fit their particular needs and are consistent with their values, the federal government has usurped this freedom. This obviously leads to problems when it comes to the inclusion of morally problematic procedures, but there is another equally pervasive effect of such a top-down system.
Personal choice and responsibility, essential aspects of healthy living and, incidentally, key components of controlling health-care costs, are gradually replaced with an expectation that someone else is going to take care of your health-care problems.
This leads to a loss of human initiative and a degradation of the human spirit. The Compendium recognizes the risk this poses, stating, “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.”
Unfortunately, many Catholics who support Obamacare downplay or ignore such issues. Really, what could go wrong with a multitrillion-dollar federally controlled health-care system?
Instead, in their single-minded desire to support Obamacare, they continue to focus solely on the preferential-option-for-the-poor aspect of Church social teaching. Yet, even if one were to lay all other facets of Catholic social thought aside, it is far from clear that Obamacare is the best approach to increase access to quality medical care for the poor.
In fact, there are many reasons to suspect that the majority of Americans, the poor included, will fare worse under Obamacare.
For starters, Obamacare will move millions of people into Medicaid, a program that is already failing to meet the needs of the poor. The present state of Medicaid is such that doctors are being reimbursed at such low rates that many are either refusing to take Medicaid patients or they are making up for it in volume by herding patients through like cattle.
Medicaid patients are left without the ability to easily gain access to the system, which subsequently increases health problems and decreases health outcomes amongst this population.
In fact, a recent University of Virginia study found surgical patients on Medicaid fared worse than patients with no insurance at all. Moving more and more people into such a dysfunctional system can hardly be called a preferential option for the poor.
The other major issue with Obamacare is that its poor design and high cost could drive up the number of uninsured. The new mandates that require plans to cover certain “essential” benefits, the community rating aspect that will require younger people to pay higher rates to subsidize older individuals, and the fact that insurers must issue policies to people even after they get sick all mean that the average cost of insurance will go up. In fact, premiums have been going up since the signing of Obamacare, a fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone with a basic familiarity of “Economics 101.”
As the cost goes up, more and more people are going to elect not to purchase insurance. Sure, there is the fine — I mean tax — that is associated with not having health insurance, but the fine ($695) is much lower than the cost of health insurance.
For many individuals, particularly those who are healthy, it makes no sense to buy insurance. Just pay the fine — I mean tax — each year, and if you or your family happens to get seriously ill, buy insurance then. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that millions of lower- to middle-income families will move toward this option because of the increasing cost of insurance.
Such a situation encourages irresponsible behavior and fails to make individuals full partners in their own health. Setting up a health-care system in which people have the right to get affordable health insurance after they get a serious illness but have no responsibility or incentive for taking care of themselves or contributing to a functioning health-care system is inconsistent with Catholic social teaching. The Compendium seems to warn about the dangers of this type of arrangement, stating, “Those … who claim their own rights yet altogether forget or neglect to carry out their respective duties are people who build with one hand and destroy with the other.”
Clearly, the health-care system in the United States needs to be reformed. As Catholics, we need to ensure that this reform is consistent with Catholic social teaching in its entirety. A one-size-fits-all federally controlled system that violates religious freedom, takes health-care decisions out of the hands of individuals and incentivizes both individuals and businesses to drop health-insurance coverage is clearly not the answer.
We need a system that incentivizes the purchasing of individually tailored insurance plans through the private market via tax credits and subsidies for low-income individuals.
We need a diversity of plans that allow people to acquire health insurance that does not violate their religious and moral convictions.
We need plans that incentivize healthy behavior through rebates or lower costs that are passed on to individual consumers.
Such a system would be much more consistent with the many interrelated aspects of Catholic social teaching, not to mention the founding principles of our country.
Daniel Kuebler, Ph.D.,
is a professor of biology at
Franciscan University
of Steubenville, Ohio.
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The oval office occupant cares nothing for the so called poor. He is a professed muslim & his every action reflects his Communist training. He is bent on destroying this Nation & especially the Catholic Church. Everything the Gov. undertakes is mismanaged & in most instances on the verge of bankruptcy. The party of death jammed through this over 2,000 page monstrosity, while they controlled both houses & sarcastically announced “It could be read after they voted for it !”. His politics of division, hatred & class envy under the guise of ‘social justice’ & the ‘common good’ are merely tactics of Communist revolutionaries. Our only hope is to kick him out in Nov. along with all of his supporters & to rescind this over 2 trillion tax permanently.
We are constantly being harangued by the left and their duplicitous media that, “You can’t legislate morality!” But, it appears they certainly feel it’s okay to “Legislate immorality!”
Throw this pervert out of the White House in November and then turn our attention toward cleaning house with the heretical anti-Catholic, Anti Magisterium “pants suit nuns” priest cohorts!
Agree with much of what’s written here but you are going to have to square all of this with the idea that the Church considers health care to be a right.
“Unfortunately, many Catholics who support Obamacare downplay or ignore such issues. Really, what could go wrong with a multitrillion-dollar federally controlled health-care system?”. Isn’t that exactly what Medicare is? Why is no one who objects to 9Obamacare also objecting to that massive, government-controlled program?
Because the virtuous private market has proven so great for global economies? That ship has left the dock and SUNK ~the entire global middle class.NO MORE. We need a system without INSURANCE COMPANIES SERVING INVESTORS NEEDS vs HEALTH NEED. Bishops should require all diocesan employees to study Pacem in Terris April 11, 1963 Pope John XXIII’s Final Encyclical on Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty
I know its escaped your Market Knows Best “bible” but True “Pro-Life” is Womb to Tomb NOT Pre-Natal to Cradle
The tax code has unintentionally redistributed income and wealth to the top 10% for a long time. The bottom half of America now have $3 for every $10 they had in 1995. Most of those at the top don’t pay taxes on their real income because it is tax deferred. For example Mr. Buffett earned $3 billion via increased stock value last year but he only had taxable income of $40 million and paid $7 million in taxes. Mr. Buffet would have paid over $700 million if he had to follow the general tax rules available to most of the middle class. Most of us pay tax on all of our income but the wealthy have $1.3 trillion in tax expenditures and deferrals which put so much tax burden on the poor and middle class income that the system has broken. Because of this we cannot fund health car from the income tax base. Tax reform, full employment and a robust economy are needed before we can revamp health care. Mr. Romney is right to want to start over. Read more at TaxNetWealth.com
Obamacare will force Catholic hospitals and other Catholic institutions to either close or become secular. This is because of the requirement to pay for abortifacients and others. The only hope is expensive case-by-case legal challenges in court.
“But even if Obamacare were to be stripped of the mandate and the abortion coverage, it would still not be in the clear with Catholic social teaching.”
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What a desperate attempt to reconcile Republican delusions with Catholic dogma. In true Republican fashion of remaining divorced from reality, it ignores the 8 years of Bush inaction, the endorsement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and assumes that the Mormon humanoid and Republicans have a solution to the health care problem beyond repealing the act. It also pretends that Obamacare wasn’t directly modelled on Romney’s plan in Massachusetts.
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It also ignores the wide acceptance of contraception by Catholics, and equates disagreement by the most pious over funding contraceptives with preventing the free exercise of religion. To attract the Catholic vote, all Romney had to do was a 180 reversal of his previous position on abortion (surprise - just as he began considering running for president) and nominate a Catholic for VP. Is there any more apt Church analogy for its faithful than a flock of sheep?
Jesus addressed people understanding that they had God-given brains and the ability to make independent decisions. What the Roman Catholic Church appears to demand regarding women’s reproductive rights is control of their decision making. How would any MALE understand the trauma many women experience when working through whatever issues/concerns cause her to question ending her pregnancy. There is no good plan in place for counseling women about either carrying her fetus/infant to term or aborting.
During my life time, women have had to use illegal, non-professionals for abortions because they were not condoned by the church. How many women lost their lives along with the life they carried because of poor conditions and life threatening mistakes made during the procedure?
Women will NOT cease to have abortions and we will not cease to council them about possibilities and to work toward an increase in assistance for women struggling with the decision to birth their baby or to abort. There decisions are truly between themselves and God.
It seems to me that the heirarchy is too frightened of having to answer for their actions with their Creator and therefore, make them so convoluted and irrational that one might believe there is something good and uplifting in them.
This is one good reason that men exclusively should not administer the matters of the Church and/or messages from God to humankind.
When I read the title of your article I expected the body of the piece to be about how and why the USCCB had criticized Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal last April, a topic that gets very little attention. Bishop Stephen Blaire had described the House passed budget proposal as one failing to meet moral criteria. See http://www.usccb.org/news/2012/12-063.cfm I was surprised to see your piece dealt a failing grade only to the obvious shortcomings of Obamacare while ignoring Rep. Ryan’s equally deplorable budget proposal.
Dr. Kuebler. A respected friend posted a link to your article on her Facebook page, so I decided to read it and was disappointed that many of your opinions are stated as facts in this publicly available article.
I’ve had a devout Catholic upbringing, and while I did not study at Catholic University or get a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology, I have read the PPACA several times as well as many of the relevant CBO reports.
Armed with my faith and this information about public health policy, I would like to respectfully examine a few of your statements:
1. “preferential option we should exhibit toward the poor” is not the same as the Compendium quote which follows and describes how “those whose living conditions interfere with their proper growth should be the focus of particular concern.” That’s actually a pretty big distinction. Catholics are not saying to treat the poor better than everyone else. We believe that we should be concerned with environments that disproportionately affect certain populations. The way you’ve written it, you’ve changed the Compendium’s meaning to support your opinion.
2. “Rather than encouraging states or local groups or communities to develop insurance plans that best fit their particular needs and are consistent with their values, the federal government has usurped this freedom.” Do an internet search for “state insurance exchange.” The federal government is investing considerable resources into the states establishing their own markets for insurance, never mind the fact that each state already establishes its own mandates for what insurance plans in their state must cover. You disregard the existence of insurance exchanges all together here, and in doing so are making your opinion appear as fact.
“We need a system that incentivizes the purchasing of individually tailored insurance plans through the private market via tax credits and subsidies for low-income individuals.” See my statement above. Insurance exchanges do exactly what you describe. The ACA is creating that platform and giving us what you have asked for: markets of private insurance products.
3. “what could go wrong with a multitrillion-dollar federally controlled health-care system?” [your sarcasm, not mine] The ONLY federally controlled health-care system in this country (before or after the ACA passed) is the VA. And frankly, they’ve made phenomenal improvements over the past 5 years. So that’s two points: the ACA doesn’t create a federally controlled health-care system, and the one that’s been in place for decades is doing quite well (in caring for the health of its population, technological advances, and financially). Perhaps you should clarify the definition of “federally controlled health-care system.” Do you mean one where the government controls all payment? Do you mean one where the government controls all clinicians? Do you mean one where the government controls all consumer choice? Because while you will find examples of those in other countries, you will certainly not find them in the ACA.
4. The whole ‘you can’t mandate birth control’ argument is in direct opposition to the argument that usually follows: ‘don’t take away individual choice.’ I think this was really the heart of the discussion, but it’s oversimplified and lost in the misinformation perpetuated in the rest of the article. It’s also a conversation worth having in a forum other than a long text full of opinions. Choice is upheld as a value by many leaders unless you start talking about women’s choices about their health. Let’s engage in the conversation with the people making the choices: where are the physicians that talk about the many indications for contraceptives? Where are the educators that talk about the health concerns women have that men don’t? Where are the women who’ve taken these prescriptions that talk about its impact on their life? Where are the social workers that have to deal with downstream affects of unwanted pregnancies taken to term? This is a much, much fuller discussion than you present here, and Catholics care about many more stakeholders than just employers. When we are equipped to have that discussion, and to deal with the implications as a community, ONLY then should we get to the task of judging individual medical decisions. You’ve jumped to that end too early with too little information and too few opinions (namely any other than your own).
Don’t get me wrong, Dr. Kuebler, I’m glad that my friend posted your article because it brings up a lot of important discussions about healthcare reform and the applicable tenets of Catholicism.
But as best I can tell, many of your opinions are stated as facts, and are also wrong. I have higher expectations for you when writing in a public forum. This article does an unfortunate disservice for anyone trying to write about this issue and any readers that are trying to educate themselves. Please consider re-writing portions of this article indicating omissions, or where it is purely your opinion, or at the very least, including all the relevant sources so that others can see the data points you’ve collected to draw your conclusions. Thank you.
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