Bishops: Get involved in health care debate

Florida’s bishops are asking all Floridians to contact their U.S. legislators to urge them “to support health care reform that respects human life and dignity, from its earliest beginnings to its natural end.”

DENISE O’TOOLE KELLY | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

Posted: 06.23.09

ORLANDO | Just before details began to emerge from the Obama administration and congressional committees about their proposals for reforming the nation’s health care system, Florida’s bishops helped the U.S. bishops urge the faithful to participate in the debate.

The Florida Catholic Conference, which represents the state’s bishops on public policy matters, sent out an e-mail action alert June 8 to members of its Advocacy Network noting that U.S. Senate and House committees were likely to begin discussing specific legislative proposals the following week. The bishops encouraged Catholic Floridians to contact Sens. Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez as well as their congressional representative to ask them “to support health care reform that respects human life and dignity, from its earliest beginnings to its natural end.”

“In our Catholic tradition, health care is a basic human right. Access to health care should not depend on where a person works, how much a family earns or where a person lives. Instead, every person, created in the image and likeness of God, has a right to life and to those things necessary to sustain life, including affordable, quality health care,” the e-mail read in part.

Michael Sheedy, the Florida Catholic Conference’s associate director for health, said June 15 that the state organization was helping to spread the word at the request of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“Health care reform has been a long priority of the Florida bishops as well as the U.S. Catholic bishops,” Sheedy said.

The Florida e-mail included a link to a June 2 action alert posted by USCCB’s Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development on the organization’s Web site. The posting laid out four principles the U.S. bishops say should guide the writing of health reform legislation. According to the bishops, reform should:

• Include health care coverage for all people from conception to natural death, and continue the federal ban on funding for abortions;

• Include access for all with special concern for the poor;

• Pursue the common good and preserve pluralism, including freedom of conscience; and

• Restrain costs and apply costs equitably among payers.

Sheedy emphasized the need to make sure the poor are not left behind.

“Our Catholic social teaching is all about a preferential option for the poor,” he said, adding an explanation of the term. “It’s what you have got to do at the beginning. As you’re taking care of yourself, you’re taking care of the poor.”

He also acknowledged concern that abortion supporters would use the sweeping discussion of health care to advance their agenda.

“To the Florida bishops, the U.S. bishops, that’s a big deal,” Sheedy said, noting that the Catholic Health Association’s president, Sister Carol Keehan, has said that trying to expand access to abortion under the guise of expanding access to health care would derail the process. “If they try to do that, it will blow up reform,” Sheedy said.

He said the Catholic Health Association and the USCCB will evaluate legislative proposals as they evolve against the four major principles set out by the bishops.

WHAT’S BEING PROPOSED

As of June 15, President Barack Obama had conveyed to Senate leaders what he would like to see in reform legislation. In a June 2 letter to Sens. Edward Kennedy and Max Baucus, Obama said the legislation should include steps to promote replication of high-quality, lower-cost health care programs, and create a health insurance exchange to give Americans a choice of insurers, including both private plans and a public option. Any mandates that individuals be required to carry coverage or that employers be required to provide coverage should be balanced with breaks for the poor and small businesses, Obama said.

A bill discussed June 11 in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee included an insurance exchange with a public option and also would expand eligibility for the publicly funded Medicaid program for the poor. The bill, known as the Affordable Health Choices Act, also included employer mandates to encourage coverage through the workplace and a “soft” individual mandate that would provide hardship exemptions and low-income subsidies, according to a Catholic Health Association update issued June 12. Three House committees also were working on similar legislation at the time, according to the document.

The update, and Sheedy, noted that information on proposal costs was to be released June 19.

“By the end of this week, we’re going to see what the Senate’s proposal will cost,” he said.

Sheedy called the proposals “somewhat fluid,” and predicted the direction of reform will be apparent before Congress recesses in August.

“It’s going to be the summer of health care reform,” he said. “Whether it goes forward or not, this is going to be the focus of a lot of folks in Washington.”

 

Return to Florida Catholic Online Home Page

Advertisement

Advertisement