Catholic Bishops Question Health Care

Updated: Saturday, 05 Sep 2009, 10:30 PM EDT
Published : Saturday, 05 Sep 2009, 10:26 PM EDT

DENVER (AP) - U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have taken a consistent line on a health care overhaul: It's vital, but they cannot support proposals that go too far in covering abortion and not far enough in protecting health workers who don't want to provide that procedure.

Now, at least a half-dozen bishops have gone beyond that position, some of them using hard-hitting terms such as "socialization" and "monopolization" to launch a broader critique of big government.

Their argument isn't that the federal government should necessarily stay out of health care coverage altogether, but that an oversized government health system could wield too much power over people's lives.

"Among the Catholic bishops, on all issues, there will be disagreement," said Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University. "This is almost like the minority report being issued here."

Although the limited-government bishops are a small minority, if their arguments gain momentum it could pose another challenge to President Barack Obama's efforts to make sweeping changes to the nation's health care system.

U.S. bishops for decades have advocated comprehensive health care coverage as a right for all Americans, with a special focus on meeting the basic medical needs of the poor, elderly and disabled.

But bishops taking the lead on health care — the ones who have written letters to Congress on behalf of the bishops' conference — have made it clear that the current legislation has too many problems.

Bishops have criticized proposals that would allow the proposed government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions. As it stands, federal funds for abortions are restricted to cases involving rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother. Bishops also are insisting on protections for health care workers who in good conscience feel they cannot have a hand in abortion services.

"The bishops want to support health care reform," Bishop William Murphy, chairman of the bishops' Committee Domestic Justice and Human Development, wrote to Congress. "We have in the past and we always must insist that health care reform excludes abortion coverage or any other provisions that threaten the sanctity of life."

The conference has not taken a position on the public option — a proposed government-run competitor to private insurers. But it supports "a variety of options" in health plans which may include a public one.

Most bishops voicing concern about overzealous government base their arguments in the Catholic social teaching of "subsidiarity" — essentially, that decisions are best made at the lowest level possible.

Among the bishops who have written columns, commentaries or pastoral letters including comments about excessive government control of health care:

— Bishop Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, warned that health care should not be subject to "federal monopolization." He wrote "... the proper role of government is to regulate the private sector in order to foster healthy competition and curtail abuses. Therefore any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect."

The church, Nickless wrote, "does not teach that 'health care' as such, without distinction, is a natural right."

— Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford, Illinois, wrote that health care should be thought of "as more of a market than a system." He added: "Our federal bureaucracy is a vast wasteland strewn with the carcasses of absurd federal programs which proved infinitely worse than the problems they were established to correct."

— Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote that "a proper government role in solving the health-care crisis does not necessarily demand a national public plan, run or supervised by government authorities. Real health-care reform need not automatically translate into federal programming."

— Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, North Dakota, cited the danger of thinking "the national government is the sole instrument of the common good."

The most thorough critique, however, comes in a joint pastoral letter from Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Kansas City, Kansas, diocese and Bishop Robert Finn of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese in Missouri.

Posted online Tuesday, the letter says: "The right of every individual to access health care does not necessarily suppose an obligation on the part of the government to provide it ... The teaching of the universal church has never been to suggest a government socialization of medical services."

A government that oversteps its authority on health care, the bishops wrote, could create a future tax burden and contribute to "permanent dependency for individuals or families upon the state."

In an interview, Finn said "necessary health care" is part of the right to life, and that the government probably has a role in providing it. He said the letter was not meant to scuttle reform or help Republicans.

"It's not so much a commentary applied to some current proposal as much as a caution about the government

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