From America magazine:
As people of faith we can be guided by a long tradition of Catholic social teaching that unambiguously supports public initiatives to ensure access to health care when markets alone fail to achieve universal coverage. Those who express exaggerated fears of a government takeover and bureaucratic centralization tend to portray government as somehow a threat to the people and their freedom, but Catholic social teaching consistently reminds us that public authority is the ordinary mechanism by which people undertake collective action. The principle of subsidiarity provides a check against needless centralization, but it must not be misinterpreted as an excuse to forgo truly necessary national initiatives.
Catholic social teaching offers a distinctively organic view of society that calls all parties to be open to sacrifice for the good of the whole. That common good springs from true cooperation, not merely the competitive interaction of self-interests. Reforming health care should not be reduced to a partisan issue, with the eyes of negotiators distracted by the goal of scoring political advantage. We will achieve the aims of reform—extending coverage to the uninsured, rationalizing procedures and policies and lowering costs—only if all parties check their egos and partisan interests at the door and work together.
The greatest temptation now is to despair of true reform any time soon. After all, powerful special interests have a stake in the status quo, and the major political parties clearly desire different outcomes. But the light shed by Catholic social teaching reveals the possibility for progress, a progress that can be assured only if we recognize that health care is not just another commodity to be distributed according to people’s ability to pay. Many resources within Catholic social thought—including its requirement of a preferential option for the poor—challenge us to re-imagine health care as a basic human need, no less a religious obligation than providing food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless and clothing for the naked.
For the entre editorial, go here: http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11869
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