So says an editorial in the August 15 issue of The [London] Tablet The International Catholic Weekly:
President Barack Obama’s health-care reforms are in deep trouble. All
over the United States rival lobby groups have argued and sometimes
clashed as opponents of the reforms sense they may be on the verge of
victory. There may be sufficient votes in Congress from an awkward
alliance of Republicans and conservative Democrats to ensure that
whatever legislation emerges from the hullabaloo is a pale shadow of
what Mr Obama intended, and indeed promised, during his election
campaign. It is unfortunate that the one body that could turn out to be
a decisive strategic force in his favour, the US Catholic bishops, have
so far concentrated on a specifically Catholic issue – making sure
state-funded health care does not include abortion – rather than the
more general principle of the common good. Through the national network
of Catholic hospitals, delivering nearly 20 per cent of all hospital
care, and through the influence they wield as leaders of America’s
largest Christian denomination, they could play a central role in
salvaging Mr Obama’s health-care programme.
This is indeed a
Catholic matter. Few government proposals have had “preferential option
for the poor” stamped over them more clearly. Nearly 50 million
Americans do not have health-care coverage, which means they cannot
afford to go to their doctor when they have symptoms that ought to be
investigated, nor can they buy simple and effective remedies such as
antibiotics. The Church’s teaching is clear: health care is a basic
right, derived from the right to life itself. Of course abortion is
important, but the Catholic bishops have not put anything like equal
stress on these other social justice dimensions of the health-care
debate. Though some grass-roots Catholic lobby groups have mobilised to
support the Obama reforms, without episcopal support they will remain
marginal to the debate.
The opponents of change are largely
funded by the operators of the health insurance industry, which, as in
the early 1990s, sense a threat to their profits. They are the robber
barons of their age. All the dark arts of media misrepresentation have
been deployed to turn public opinion against Mr Obama’s policy. Through
their greed and inefficiency, America spends something like double per
head on health care compared with a country such as France, whose
state-run health system is acknowledged as one of the world’s best.
Even at the level of spin and sound bites, the bishops could make a
difference. They could refute the constant slur of “socialised
medicine” that opponents throw mindlessly around, simply by saying that
health care for all is in fact “Catholic medicine”. Once they began to
introduce reason and truth into the debate, they could also point out
that what Mr Obama is proposing is in principle no different from
extending Medicare – which brings affordable medical treatment to
America’s elderly – to everyone.
When Britain’s National
Health Service was set up in 1948, the Catholic hierarchy led by
Cardinal Griffin was also preoccupied with its own Catholic agenda, not
abortion but winning an opt-out for Catholic hospitals. So the birth of
the National Health Service, one of the great forward strides for
social justice, had no Catholic blessing. The bishops failed to put the
promotion of social justice above their churchly priorities. It is a
mistake the American bishops may be about to repeat.
As we have been working our way through John 6 at Mass these past few weeks, this passage from the Omnivore's Dilemma caught my attention. "[The grass farmer] reached down deep where his pigs were happily rooting and brought a handful of fresh compost right up to my nose. What had been cow manure and woodchips just a few weeks before now smelled as sweet and warm as the forest floor in summertime, a miracle of transubstantiation."
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
One of the highlights of my first year of law school was when my Criminal Law class signed a petition asking Justice Scalia to attend one of our class sessions and debate our professor, Alan Dershowitz, who was always challenging Scalia's views on the Constitution without the Justice being around to defend himself. To our surprise, Scalia accepted and called Dershowitz (who did not know about our invitation) to let him know that he was going to have a visitor in class. I had a front row seat for a rollicking debate.
History may be repeating itself, and the coming debate, if it happens, should prove to be even more interesting for those interested in Catholic legal theory. Details here
Peter Steinfels quotes Dan Callahan as saying "whenever demand for some resource outstrips
supply, as seems to be the case for quality medical care, some kind of
rationing, whether by official policy or by economic advantage, starts
to operate."
However, "rationing" must be conscious in order to be degrading. When market forces (or geographic distances or any other barriers not aimed against any particular group) discriminate, as at present, there is physical harm to the health of some of us -- and we should indeed help those of us in need through higher taxes.
But when the State says who deserves to live and
who does not, an invidious principle become a knife inserted into the
heart of democracy, human equality, and human dignity. Some of us lose not only money or health care but also (and more
importantly, I think) equal respect for our lives and for our very being.
WIth respect to the question posed by our reader, I agree with Rob that the EEOC is unlikely to deem the coverage of NFP sufficient. It is the second of the reasons Rob mentioned that is key.
The claim here is not that an employer is obligated to provide some family planning coverage (such that NFP might be viewed to be sufficient), but that failing to cover prescription contraception is a form of sexual discrimination. Because prescription contraceptives are used exclusively by women, the exclusion of coverage is viewed as discrimination on the basis of sex (and/or pregnancy). It has also been argued that if a plan cover other prescription medication and not contraceptives, women bear a disproportionate share of out-of-pocket health care costs.
As an aside, the state laws that deal with this issue typically require that if a plan provides any prescription coverage, it has to provide coverage of all FDA-approved means of prescription contraception.
I don't think Rob's first argument would be persuasive in the absence of the second. Employers have tremendous freedom re what they cover under their health plsns. In the absence of a claim of sexal discrimination, it is irrelevant what other purpose contraception is used for.
