Health Care Reform: When ‘rights’ are wrong

Commentary

Health Care Reform: When ‘rights’ are wrong

By Parker Williamson, The Layman, September 4, 2009

Health care is not an entitlement issue. Those who frame public discourse on this subject in the language of “rights” – sadly, this is the approach employed by political lobbyists for the Presbyterian Church (USA) – reveal their ignorance of Scripture and of the human condition.

 

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If human beings had a right to good health, then billions of us – ultimately, all of us – may file a grievance against our Creator. Some of us are unhealthy at birth. All of us are born hosting bacteria that under conditions beyond our control can result in illness and death. Scripture informs us that there is a time to be born and a time to die. These times are not set by us, and they most certainly should not be set by our government. They are the province of God.

Jesus met scores of infirm people. He healed some. He didn’t heal others. To a lame man who languished beside the pool of Bethesda, Jesus asked, “Do you want to be healed?” That question is worth asking today. Does the person whose chronic obesity leads to diabetes, heart trouble, hip and knee surgery and life threatening diseases want to the healed?

Do the heavy smoker, the drug abuser and the alcoholic want to be healed? Do persons who engage in heterosexual promiscuity and practice homosexual aberration that leads to sexually transmitted diseases want to be healed?

To what extent are persons whose lifestyle choices demonstrably provoke illness responsible to participate in their own healing? Of course, we want to be relieved of our symptoms, presumably at government expense, but will we submit to the tougher cure? Do we want to be healed?

Compassion

While the language of entitlement is not scriptural, the language of compassion is. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus identifies the neighbor (the person toward whom his disciples should be compassionate) as any needy person. The fact that a Jew was being served by a Samaritan suggests that our compassion not be limited by borders. Who among us is the Samaritan? Might that person be the illegal alien, the undocumented worker?

Jesus calls us to extend our healing hand, not because the recipients have a right to it, but because we express our love for the Lord through serving persons in need. In serving them, we serve Him.

How shall we serve the neighbor?

But the question remains, how shall we effectively and efficiently express this compassion? This is a methodological, not a theological question. It is a matter of prudential judgment. As such, it gives rise to a multitude of answers about which persons of good will may disagree.

Compassion is a good thing, but compassion, per se, does not guarantee efficient and effective implementation. Health care reform requires wise thinking and a careful balance between donor generosity and recipient responsibility. Neighborhood clinics that offer basic level health care may be the answer for treating the poor. They should include at least a minimal co-payment to mitigate abuse of the public’s compassion, and they should require of recipients responsible lifestyle disciplines to prevent their undermining treatment protocols.

In our health care reform discussion, we would do well to be reminded of the fact that health care is currently being provided for the poor. Proponents of the administration’s health care reform proposals often bemoan the number of persons whom they say are uninsured, implying that because these persons are not insured they do not have access to health care. This is false, as anyone who visits a hospital emergency room can attest.

Our non-profit hospitals are writing off millions of dollars of free care to the poor, attempting to cover these losses by increasing their fees to privately insured patients. By default, our hospitals are being forced to administer a wealth transfer system. It is exceedingly burdensome to them and a highly inefficient method for meeting the needs of the poor. At a minimum, some form of reimbursement to our hospitals is justified until a more basic and efficient level of community health care for the poor can be put into place.

‘Do no harm’

No health care system can cover all the bases, but any proposed “reform” should comply with a primary principle, spelled out by Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine: “As to diseases, make a habit of two things: to help, or at least to do no harm.”

Killing little children certainly violates the Hippocratic Oath, not to mention Jesus’ warning that compared to the judgment of God, those who would harm His little ones would fare better if a millstone were tied to their necks and they were thrown into the sea!

Universal health care proposals currently undergoing congressional consideration provide federal funding for Planned Parenthood, a major abortion advocate. Some proposals explicitly include funding for abortion. Others, more passively, choose not to deny it. The House bill includes infanticide via the Capps amendment. In the Senate, Committee Chairman Barbara Mikulski denied a request to include language denying federal funding to abortion services.

The Obama administration includes abortion in its definition of reproductive health care. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on July 19, “Reproductive health care includes access to abortion.”
Numerous amendments have been proposed during both House and Senate committee meetings, proposing to exclude abortion from health care legislation. Each has been defeated by majority committee members.

If the health care legislation now being debated by Congress makes it to the president’s desk, those who purportedly represent us can expect millstones from heaven. There will be no mercy for those who in the dubious name of universal health care would slaughter little children in the womb.

So, what shall Christians who seek to inject moral principles and prudential judgment into the health care debate conclude?

We will steadfastly reject the language of entitlement. We will respond to the Lord’s call for compassion, challenging the wisest among us to implement that compassion through policies that define reciprocal partnerships between donor and recipient. And we will not conceal in any health care legislation daggers that can pierce the hearts of our children.

The Rev. Parker T. Williamson is editor emeritus, consultant to the Presbyterian Lay Committee, and an honorably retired PCUSA minister.