By Mark Tooley on 9.8.09 @ 6:07AM
A compelling response from an Iowa bishop.
The Religious Left sacramentalizes nearly every proposed
expansion of the Welfare State, with government-controlled health
care its favorite sacrament. Supporting arguments are usual
superficial: Jesus loved the poor, therefore the state must
displace all other human institutions and provide every human
need.
Although trending left in recent years, the National Association
of Evangelicals (NAE) has provided some implicit caution against
Obamacare, thanks to a 1994 policy position. A recent NAE
news release on health care warns against any
government promotion of or funding for abortion or euthanasia. It
urges health care "accessible to all." But it warns that an
equitable system must include "judicial and tort law reform that
will bring into balance legitimate claims and fair compensation."
It also calls for maximizing the "creativity of the private
sector while minimizing governmental control" of health care.
Only a few words, but at least NAE does admit to the moral good
of restricting government power while affirming non-government
social institutions. In a 1994 resolution, NAE elaborated a
little on tort reform, faulting health care costs on "medical
malpractice insurance, apparent frivolous claims, and extreme
awards." Most of the Religious Left, including the Evangelical
Left, at least in its sloganeering, will not acknowledge
"frivolous claims" driving up medical costs, preferring to
demonize insurance companies and their supposedly immoral
expectation of profit.
Evangelicals often excel at organizing and activism but less so
at complex moral reasoning that includes but is not limited to
Scripture. Sometimes Roman Catholics are better equipped. Bishop
R. Walter Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, recently explained why
government is not God's only tool for relieving distress. Of
course, he insisted that no government policy should underwrite
abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research. "A
so-called reform that imposes these evils on us would be far
worse than keeping the health care system we now have," he
wrote.
More interestingly, Bishop Nickless asserted that Roman
Catholicism does not teach that health care is a "natural right."
This seemingly conflicts with a recent common assertion from Jim
Wallis' Sojourners group, a leading cheer leader for Obamacare,
and one of whose recent polemicists opined that health care is a
"a human right" mandating the "obligation of governments to
provide access to health care for all of their citizens." But the
Bishop more carefully explained that health care is "political"
right, not a natural right, whose logistical provision is a
matter of "prudential judgment" and not direct church doctrine.
As a prudential judgment, the Bishop said Catholicism does "not
teach that government should directly provide health care."
Unlike national defense, for which "government monopolization is
objectively good" because it limits violence and deters abusive
private armies," health care should "not be subject to federal
monopolization." The bishop cited preservation of "patient
choice" through a "flourishing private sector" as the "only way
to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily."
He warned that a "government monopoly would not be motivated by
profit" but would be motivated by "bureaucratic" quotas and
self-defined "best procedures" over which most citizens would
have little influence. Government should properly regulate the
private sector "to foster healthy competition and to curtail
abuses," Nickless wrote. But "any legislation that undermines the
viability of the private sector is suspect," he said. And special
protections are needed for private, religious hospitals that
"most vigorously [are] offering actual health care to the poorest
of the poor."
Bishop Nickless also cited the threat of a nanny state mandating
"preventative care," which is a "moral obligation of the
individual to God and to his or her family and loved ones, not a
right to be demanded from society." He similarly warned that the
growing number of elderly concurrent with diminishing numbers of
younger people in the work force will make social provision of
health care for the poor increasingly difficult financially,
unless a culture of life is restored. The Bishop specifically
criticized the "public insurance option," which will encourage
smaller employers to dump their employees into the federal plan,
denying their employees access to private health insurance. It
will also "saddle the working classes with additional taxes for
inefficient and immoral entitlements." And it will "impinge on
the vitality of the private sector."
How novel that the Bishop should argue that higher taxes,
bureaucratic inefficiency and suppression of private initiative
would actually harm the working classes. Religious Left groups
like Sojourners and Mainline Protestant lobby offices love to
insist that Jesus' command in Matthew 25 to care for the "least
of these" is an automatic divine ordinance for government control
of health care, and virtually everything else. In this mindset,
only government, lacking the profit motive, is an honest arbiter
of justice and protector of the vulnerable. The Religious Left
ignores history, and the Scriptures, when it forgets that the
greatest evils often arise from government, especially when
exceeding its proper boundaries, and suppressing other divinely
ordained institutions such as the family and church.
Explaining that God's face is not automatically found in
coercively expanding government bureaucracy requires more
verbiage than most bumper stickers allow. But Bishop Nickless,
with a little help form the NAE, offers intelligent alternative
thinking to the Religious Left's blind faith in Obamacare.
topics:
Catholic Church, Obamacare, Evangelicals
