Health Care Ranting

Apologies, but there's a health care rant ahead.

I'm angry that the Christian church has not taken a more prominent role in advocating for health care as a human right. I'm shocked at the number of comments I've read or arguments I've heard from evangelical Christians who see universal health care as the worst thing since people sacrificed droves of children to Moloch. More--I'm baffled. I can see that there are reasonable cases to be made for arguing that the free market rather than federal control provides better health care (I have not heard such arguments, and it strikes me that the free market has had more than enough time to prove whether it's good at health care).

But often I don't hear reasoned arguments but rather xenophobic screeds against the "illegals" who will somehow find their way to free health care. Or I hear the entire health care reform idea as some oh-so-clever ruse to smuggle in government-funded abortion. Or it's just "socialism." And more often than not, these anti-health care folk will wax Biblical about how much on God's side they are (or vice versa), urging all good Bible-believing Christians to up and follow them.

Let me take the three allegations in reverse. First, I'm unclear just what they mean by socialism. I note that it's really only in the US that "socialism" equates to "Stalinist communism" or some such totalitarian system. Most other industrialized nations see socialism as the perfectly sensible idea that some services should not be subject to control by the profit motives of capitalists. Insurance companies do not exist to make sure people have access to health care; they exist to make money. When those two ideals (care, profit) conflict, guess which one wins? As many others have pointed out, it's profit-driven insurance companies that ration care or sponsor "death panels." Insofar as some rationing is necessary--and some is--I'd prefer that the rationing agency be transparent, accountable, and relatively free from profit motive: i.e., the government.

I'm hesitant to argue that the Bible directly endorses any modern economic system. Were I to have to venture a guess on that, however, I'd have to say that references to the early church's members sharing all they had with each other sure doesn't resemble capitalism...

The abortion issue. Setting aside the larger pro-life/pro-choice debate, and setting aside the fact that federal guidelines already make it difficult to see how abortion could be overtly funded under reform bills--setting these questions aside, suppose right-wing critics are correct, and current bills under consideration do have loopholes that could allow someone's abortion to be covered. Frankly, though I don't doubt the sincerity of abortion foes' feelings about abortion, I think this government-sponsored-abortion issue is a ruse, a convenient excuse for opposing the bill. After all, if the abortion loophole were closed, would critics then drop their opposition to the reform effort? I doubt it. Would they, having won the abortion battle, be equally willing to pay for contraceptive/sex ed drives to prevent unwanted pregnancy? Would they be for government-funded prenatal and post-natal care? For adoption and early childhood education? I desist, as I'm repeating well-worn arguments about the paradox of caring more about the unborn than the born.

Finally, though--the "illegal immigrant" issue. I'm sorry, but I just don't see how any halfway inerrantist Christian can have anything but the most liberal attitude regarding immigration. The scripture is utterly straightforward: "The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God" (Lev 19:34, NIV). Certainly loving the alien as yourself means wanting her to have necessary health care. I mean, what's the alternative?

Indeed, that question should be at the forefront of the debate on health care in general: What's the alternative? If you insist on excluding certain groups from universal access to health care (e.g., illegal immigrants, the unemployed, the uninsurable, the poor, others ), then have the honesty to recognize the implications of that stance. To whit: you endorse the death penalty for the sin of poverty, pre-existing conditions, and/or undocumented status. The poor deserve to die of preventable or treatable conditions, such a stance suggests. Ditto illegal immigrants. Ditto people with pre-existing conditions or bad credit. Ditto the unemployed. They deserve un-health.

I don't see any wiggle room here for people who claim to be Christ-followers, especially those who claim "pro-life" as a label. How can such people support anyone's exclusion from life-saving procedures? Or rather, support whatever exclusions you wish. Be OK with the poor or the stranger in our midst suffering and dying. But don't then say that you do so from a Bible-based or Christian ethic. The Bible is simply more radical than that.

One rebuttal to this argument that I've heard insists that the Bible urges charity, voluntary giving, not taxation (which they define as the government's taking money by force). I read one editorial (in a student newspaper) along those lines, suggesting that the best system from a faith point of view would be not "socialism" (which the writer did not bother to define) but rather a largish charity run by the good-willed people of multiple (Christian) faiths to provide necessary services to those who cannot afford them otherwise.

Hogwash.

Organized Christianity has had over two hundred years in this country to erect anything resembling such a charity organization with anything like the scope and reach the writer describes. It hasn't happened yet. I do not think it likely to happen at all.

Now, I do not view the Bible as a handbook to how to structure modern societies (what does the Bible say about interstate commerce regulation? Space exploration funding? Nuclear waste disposal?). But nowhere do I find Jesus, the apostles, the prophets, or other writers saying anything like "Give to the poor--but only if it's via a charity" or "Resist any systemic effort to improve the lives of the poor and needy unless it takes the form of a strictly volunteer organization." Indeed, Christ says that if someone sues you and demands your shirt as payment, you are to give them your cloak as well. Christian love and generosity is that which exceeds any system of giving, not that which substitutes for it.

More tomorrow,

JF