Pro-Life but Anti-Health Care?
Why some Christians are contradicting themselves in the healthcare debate.
Aug 27th, 2009 | By Skye Jethani | Category: Culture, Features, PoliticsReally?
Here’s the problem. Christians who believe in the sanctity of life ought to be concerned about any health care system overhaul that will increase abortions. But our conviction about life should also lead us to care about the 45 million Americans who lack health insurance and therefore receive inadequate care. We should care that the uninsured are 1.6 times more likely to die from cancer than those with insurance who are diagnosed and treated earlier. We should care that we have a system that discriminates against those with preexisting conditions, the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. Our belief in the value of life should drive us to seek a system that will care for our brothers and sisters after they are born and not just before.
Of course one of the great fears of reform opponents is that a government program will include “death panels” to ration care to the elderly and determine which patients are a poor use of resources. Responding to this concern, Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in suburban Maryland and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, says, “The idea that my life is worth more than someone else’s is inconceivable.”
He’s absolutely right. So why then does he enthusiastically endorse the current health care system that discriminates against those who are unemployed, underemployed, disabled, poor, or are determined to be a bad investment of insurance company dollars?
Consider this report from a column in the NYTimes about former insurance industry executive turned reform advocate, Wendell Potter. He testified before congress about tactics used by health care insurance companies to lower costs and increase profits:
One way to do that is to deny requests for expensive procedures. A second is “rescission” — seizing upon a technicality to cancel the policy of someone who has been paying premiums and finally gets cancer or some other expensive disease. A Congressional investigation into rescission found that three insurers, including Blue Cross of California, used this technique to cancel more than 20,000 policies over five years, saving the companies $300 million in claims.
As The Los Angeles Times has reported, insurers encourage this approach through performance evaluations. One Blue Cross employee earned a perfect evaluation score after dropping thousands of policyholders who faced nearly $10 million in medical expenses.
Mr. Potter notes that a third tactic is for insurers to raise premiums for a small business astronomically after an employee is found to have an illness that will be very expensive to treat. That forces the business to drop coverage for all its employees or go elsewhere.
Do those of us who consider ourselves “pro-life” really want to be defending this system?
I’m not saying a government takeover of health care is the answer. (Personally, I’d like to see how well the government does running GM before I trust them with the nation’s BMs.) But if you are a Christian and committed to the value of life, don’t be uncritically sucked into the belief that the current system protects life and any reform will harm it. Like most things as complicated as health care, it’s just not that simple.
As someone with a pre-existing condition, who is on COBRA insurance ending next summer, I am worried about what will happen to my insurance plan. I will no longer receive my COBRA benefits, nor will I be able to collect Social Security (they have denied me twice already for income reasons), does the State plan to take on the masses of people with pre-existing condition into their Medicaid program? And what type of healthcare will we be given, better, worse, expensive drugs that are preventative or just what is needed to keep you going now….oye! I can feel my head-spinning thinking about it!
I’m just curious why so many people think they have a “right” to heath care.
while I totally support public funding for ER life saving immediate care, long term care and optional procedures are for those that can afford them (either in cash, loans or an insurance provider)
why single out health care, why not say we all have the right to drive a brand new Mercedes-Benz sport convertible or live in a 50 room mansion with maids and a butler? (and who’s gonna be the butler’s butler??)
if you don’t like living in a capitalistic society, feel free to move to China or Russia.
[…] I’d hoped to post some thoughts about the way fear has impacted the current health care debate, but the week got away from me. Maybe when we get home. In the meantime, I recommend to you Skye’s post on the issue, “Pro-Life but Anti-Health Care?“ […]
my_rights,
For that matter, why do so many people think they have a right to police protection of their streets, military protection from invading armies, or fire protection from the local fire department? None of these are guaranteed by the Constitution, and yet we all agree to pay for them with our tax dollars. Why not expect citizens to fund their own private security forces and develop co-op fire brigades?
I think the a right to health care is rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the God-given human rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” A right to life includes a right to be born, and a right to seek the preservation of one’s life through health.
Now, what’s up for debate is whether or not this right must be fulfilled by the federal government, or merely protected by the federal government. At this time I’m in favor of reform that guarantees every American has the opportunity to get health coverage. (Laws the prevent corporations from denying coverage to those who need it most.) That means the government protects our right…I’m not sure that means the government must provide health care for everyone.
Skye,
I am pro-life but against the government trying to take over health care. I think “most” pro-lifers do believe that health care most definitely needs reform, but NOT to have government be the one to be in control of it. I am not “anti-health-care”….I am anti-government-controlled-healthcare. I want LESS government, not more. I think it is wrong to think that because people are against the government taking over healthcare means that they are against all reform. The current health care situation is not working. My husband and I are in full-time ministry and have to purchase our own health insurance for our family of four. No one buys it for us, we don’t have an employer that provides it. I would like to see health insurance reform, we would undoubtedly benefit from it. But why can’t we come up with some good ideas that don’t have the government running it? Why does it have to be all or nothing? Look up some of the ideas that the CEO of Whole Foods came up with….why can’t we implement those? There are answers but more government intrusion is not one of them.
What do you do about people that just don’t think that health insurance is a priority? I work with several people that buy four cartons of cigarettes each week, drive a nice car, buy groceries at a convenience store but drive without insurance on their car and go without health insurance. It’s just not a priority to them, they’re rather spend their money elsewhere. I bet they’re included in that number of people uninsured.
Jo,
I think you have a good point. I’m not convinced a government run system is the answer either. But what I found so troubling about the report in USA Today about the Christian group is that they’re not just against government run health care…they’re actually in favor of the system we have now without changes. They believe the current system “is working.”
Indeed there are plenty of uninsured who have chosen to not make health insurance a priority. Many of these are younger, healthy folks who would rather spend the money on something else and take their chances. (And, to be fair, the odds are on their side that they won’t have some kind of catastrophic injury or disease.) However, because these millions of healthy Americans are not paying into a health insurance program, it raises the rates for everyone else. In other words, there are fewer healthy people paying for more sick people…everyone’s costs go up.
This is why many states, including mine, mandated every driver to buy auto insurance. If everyone pays into the system, the costs go down. If the risk is spread over a larger pool of people, everyone saves money. That’s one thing the govt. is contemplating…legally mandating everyone get insured to lower costs much the same way as auto insurance.
BTW, this is one aspect of the legislation health insurance companies favor. They’d love the government to force everyone to buy their products.
“That means the government protects our right…I’m not sure that means the government must provide health care for everyone.”
If you change the above to:
“That means the government protects our right to health care, but must NOT provide health care.”
then I’m in 100% agreement, not that we have to agree.
Consider this article in your debate:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/18/deaths.health.insurance/index.html
I don’t think you can chalk up those who don’t have healthcare to only being “younger, healthy folks who would rather spend the money on something else and take their chances”. And I think it’s important to remember that life does not stop after you’re born, so making lives better and keeping people healthy and ALIVE is “Pro-Life”.
Regarding the argument about whether or not it’s a “right” to have health care: Does it really matter? Of course it’s not a “right”, but do you really feel good about the fact that if you end up with cancer you might be kicked off your insurance? Is it important to you that you don’t go bankrupt if your otherwise healthy body is involved in an accident and you don’t have health insurance because you lost your job and your COBRA ran out? It doesn’t help you to have “rights” if you can’t afford those rights. (We all have a right to own a beach house in Malibu, but how many of us have those?)
And even WITH healthcare coverage, I’ve seen a dear friend of mine recover from a heart attack with full coverage and still be stuck with $200k in hospital bills that his insurance company won’t cover. If he had been granted coverage his whole life, the problem would have been caught sooner, but if he had the “pre-existing condition” then he wouldn’t have been able to get coverage before the incident. How is that considered the kind of quality of life treatment you’d expect in a caring “Christian” country?
The bottom line of this debate should be that if you’re concerned about the well-being of humans as a Christian, then you should be supporting making health care available to every single person in this country. If that happens because of some Government-run plan, then fine. If it works out that health care companies can make sure every person in the company is covered, then that’s great, too. (Not likely, given that they are driven by profits, but I’ll give you that point just for the sake of pleasantness.)