God of grace and God of glory,” prayed Cynthia Hale during a national conference call Aug. 19 on health care reform. “We believe that it is your will that every man, woman, boy and girl receive quality health care in America.”
On that point, no religious leader would contest Hale, pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Ga., who prayed at the kickoff of an effort by the faith community to mobilize religious support for President Obama’s health care reform plan.
When it comes to specifics, however, there is little broad-based agreement. From the pulpits and through public statements, religious leaders have been weighing in on various elements of what they say is a crucial moral issue. Catholic bishops have lobbied against possible inclusion of abortion coverage in any federal health care plan, a possibility Obama dismissed in his prime-time speech Sept. 9.
Episcopalians passed a resolution in July favoring a single-payer system, while some Catholic bishops in the Midwest have publicly opposed any massive government effort. Some rabbis used the subject for sermons during the Jewish High Holy Days in late September.
It should surprise no one that clerical attempts to influence health care reform reflect the nation’s political divide, said Abigail Rian Evans, a former professor of practical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.
“Politics and religion have been mixing since the founding of our country, despite attempts to keep them separate,” Evans said. “In some religious groups there have been strong coalitions around health care reform and universal care and a government option for at least 30 years.”
About 15 percent of the American population — more than 45 million people — lack health insurance, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Obama, in his prime-time address to Congress, quoted a letter from the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., in which the senator said health care reform “concerns more than material things. … What we face is above all a moral issue.”
Religious leaders typically agree with that assessment. Still most of them, underneath their rhetoric about universal coverage, have not said exactly what type of new arrangement they favor.
“They’re not policy wonks,” said Thomas Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, referring specifically to Catholic bishops. “They should articulate the goals and values that should be in health care reform and then present these and use these to judge how well the proposals achieve these goals and values. But the technicalities of how you do it, I think, that should be left to the politicians, the policy wonks, the experts.”
In addition, the complex proposals make it hard for religious leaders to speak out on specifics, said Episcopal Bishop Mark Beckwith, of Newark, N.J., who plans to lobby Congress for a government-run option.
“However we pay for it, either privately or publicly or some combination thereof, the goal is to provide more coverage to more people, as we say in our worship service, to ‘respect the dignity of every human being.’ The current system, as we have it now, is not set up to do that,” Beckwith said.
But Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, is happy to speak about specifics — and say it shouldn’t be government-run health care.
The current system shouldn’t be “blown up” when more affordable reforms could bring a great benefit to everyone, Land said.
He said overhauling the health care system would be like trying to “kill a roach with a 12-gauge shotgun.”
Research shows that 80 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care and coverage, so why not attack the problems in the 20 percent rather than the whole system, Land asked.
He noted the problem is that most Americans who do not receive health care coverage as part of their employee benefits package cannot afford health insurance. That can be solved by giving tax credits — approximately $5,000 for an individual or $9,000 or $10,000 for a family — to use to purchase coverage.
“If you couple that with 50-state-wide competition (in health care), you would see all kinds of health care vehicles open up that would make it far more affordable for far more Americans,” Land said.
One issue with a single-payer system is the lack of concern for the sanctity of life in its treatment of older Americans, he noted.
That type of system is “devaluing them as they get older and saying they are less worthy to receive health care,” Land said.
Determining who is worthy to receive care is a “steep and slippery slope to dark and dangerous places,” he said.
U.S. Catholic bishops have supported universal coverage for decades, but some have raised concerns that a new plan would allow federal money to fund abortion. Obama’s insistence that it would not, and that hospitals would not be forced to provide abortions, met with favorable reviews from Catholic officials.
“I’m thrilled that he said (that), and I hope that it works out that way,” said Newark Archbishop John J. Myers.
The Catholic Church has added reason for involvement in the debate: There are 624 Catholic hospitals in the United States, and 499 Catholic long-term-care nursing facilities.
Abortion hasn’t been the only issue to concern bishops. Two neighboring bishops, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, of Kansas City, Kan., and Robert W. Finn, of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., publicly warned that a plan could include “excessive centralization” and “government socialization” of medicine.
Still, to a wide range of religious leaders, including Beckwith, some compromises are acceptable if more people can be covered.
“My commitment, as the bills evolve, is to ensure that those who are not insured will be covered,” Beckwith said. “Any proposal that moves that forward to give coverage and compassion and care to people who are otherwise out of the loop is a good thing.”
Lay groups with religious ties also are in the mix. The National Jewish Democratic Council started a group called Rabbis for Health Insurance Reform that backs Obama’s efforts. Two groups that oppose abortion but align with Democrats on many social issues, Sojourners and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, also are supporting the president’s efforts.
“We need to keep our eyes on the prize here and make sure we have universal coverage for everyone,” said John Gehring, a spokesman for Catholics in Alliance. “It (would be) a mistake for us to get sort of buried in the quagmire of abortion when really what we’re talking about here is access to health care.”
On the other side, the Family Research Council, a conservative group, has doubted Obama’s claim that federal money wouldn’t pay for abortions and has criticized liberal Christian groups’ goals.
“The religious left, which has blindly put their faith in this administration’s attempted takeover of health care, has repeatedly said they do not want to get into the weeds on the policy aspects of health care reform,” Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council’s president, said in a prepared statement the day of the conference call.
“Ensuring that taxpayers are not forced to fund abortions and that the conscience rights of health care workers are protected,” he continued, “is not getting into the weeds, but rather it is ensuring that health care reform is kept on a higher moral plane.” (RNS, TAB)
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