For now we are his followers and we will be watching their publications.

Greetings

http://sedconsolacion.blogspot.com

I completely agree that health care reform is very much needed. I believe that universal access to basic health care is a human right in a nation such as ours. The specifics of the approach can be debated. However, any healthy system will have to take into account the truth of the human person. A deficient anthropology is usually behind the mistaken theories on both sides of the aisle. Conservatives who want to leave it completely to market forces do not recognize the mutual obligation we have for one another. Liberals who want the government to take all of the responsibility do not recognize the fundamental human need for individual responsibility and liberty of action to be preserved if the individual and the social system is to flourish. Any long term sustainable system will have to try to accommodate both of these anthropological truths.

Currently the system is broken because it is an amalgam of the two aforementioned defective ideologies. We have an individualistic, market driven system with health insurance and a badly run, government controlled system in Medicaid and Medicare. The government’s proper role is in setting the conditions for a healthy system but not in removing the individual/local initiative and responsibility for running such a system. By the way, this is the great difference between a government working to end legalized abortion and taking over the management of health care. The first is within the government’s authentic role and the second exceeds it. By the way, I also think that public education has gone astray for the very same reason, though there is still the possibility of reforming it because in education there is at least a local structure in place even if it does not work very well. But this is another issue.

In the end, the current broken system is still preferable to a system that institutionalizes abortion on demand at the tax payer’s expense. It can be seen that this is an underlying goal by every defeat of language that would explicitly rule out government funded abortion from these proposals. One may not accept intrinsic evil as an integral part of a solution to a legitimate need. I would have to ask you to dig deeper into the issue of authentic social justice which can be discerned through study of the co-principles of subsidiarity and solidarity before coming to the conclusion that a government run health care system in itself is a legitimate solution to the problem. Furthermore, I would ask you to consider whether one that enshrines abortion on demand into the system could ever be a legitimate price to pay for the increased access to basic health care that I agree is needed.

Why do so many people have to equate health care reform with “death panels” and abortion? Are you really that shallow?

I work in health care in a very poor state (Mississippi) and have seen first hand the suffering of individuals who can’t afford health insurance. It is a national tragedy and embarrassment that we allow this problem to persist, rich as we are.

I am pro-life as you are. You think as I do that the government should ban abortion. So I am perplexed that you see a “government solution” for abortion as appropriate but a government solution for the uninsured as something to be afraid of.

A favorite argument of pro-choice advocates is that conservatives want to force women to have their babies, but don’t want to pay for the raising of the children. Universal health care would be a great answer to these people. Even if we don’t provide everything for every child conceived, if we advocate for universal health care we are giving every child two things, guaranteed — health insurance and public education. That is a lot and would go a long way towards shutting our opponents up.

Perhaps universal health insurance is the price we have to pay to advance the pro-life cause. But linking the worst of abortion to health care reform is not very responsible, and not very caring towards the millions who want insurance — most of whom have never had an abortion.