"The Cost is too High, the Loss is
too Great for Health Care Bill not to be Revised"
Cardinal Francis George
March 15, 2010
The Catholic Bishops of the United States have long and
consistently advocated for the reform of the American health care
system. Their experience in health care and in Catholic parishes has
acquainted them with the anguish of mothers who are unable to afford
prenatal care, of families unable to ensure quality care for their
children, and of those who cannot obtain insurance because of
preexisting conditions.
Throughout the discussion on health care over the last year, the
bishops have advocated a bipartisan approach to solving our national
health care needs. They have urged that all who are sick, injured or
in need receive necessary and appropriate medical assistance, and
that no one be deliberately killed through an expansion of federal
funding of abortion itself or of insurance plans that cover
abortion. These are the provisions of the long standing Hyde
amendment, passed annually in every federal bill appropriating funds
for health care; and surveys show that this legislation reflects the
will of the majority of our fellow citizens. The American people and
the Catholic bishops have been promised that, in any final bill, no
federal funds would be used for abortion and that the legal status
quo would be respected.
However, the bishops were left disappointed and puzzled to learn
that the basis for any vote on health care will be the Senate bill
passed on Christmas Eve. Notwithstanding the denials and
explanations of its supporters, and unlike the bill approved by the
House of Representatives in November, the Senate bill deliberately
excludes the language of the Hyde amendment. It expands federal
funding and the role of the federal government in the provision of
abortion procedures. In so doing, it forces all of us to become
involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many,
the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family
still waiting to be born.
What do the bishops find so deeply disturbing about the Senate bill?
The points at issue can be summarized briefly. The status quo in
federal abortion policy, as reflected in the Hyde Amendment,
excludes abortion from all health insurance plans receiving federal
subsidies. In the Senate bill, there is the provision that only one
of the proposed multi-state plans will not cover elective abortions
– all other plans (including other multi-state plans) can do so, and
receive federal tax credits. This means that individuals or families
in complex medical circumstances will likely be forced to choose and
contribute to an insurance plan that funds abortions in order to
meet their particular health needs.
Further, the Senate bill authorizes and appropriates billions of
dollars in new funding outside the scope of the appropriations bills
covered by the Hyde amendment and similar provisions. As the bill is
written, the new funds it appropriates over the next five years, for
Community Health Centers for example (Sec. 10503), will be available
by statute for elective abortions, even though the present
regulations do conform to the Hyde amendment. Regulations, however,
can be changed at will, unless they are governed by statute.
Additionally, no provision in the Senate bill incorporates the
longstanding and widely supported protection for conscience
regarding abortion as found in the Hyde/Weldon amendment. Moreover,
neither the House nor Senate bill contains meaningful conscience
protection outside the abortion context. Any final bill, to be fair
to all, must retain the accommodation of the full range of religious
and moral objections in the provision of health insurance and
services that are contained in current law, for both individuals and
institutions.
This analysis of the flaws in the legislation is not completely
shared by the leaders of the Catholic Health Association. They
believe, moreover, that the defects that they do recognize can be
corrected after the passage of the final bill. The bishops, however,
judge that the flaws are so fundamental that they vitiate the good
that the bill intends to promote. Assurances that the moral
objections to the legislation can be met only after the bill is
passed seem a little like asking us, in Midwestern parlance, to buy
a pig in a poke.
What is tragic about this turn of events is that it needn’t have
happened. The status quo that has served our national consensus and
respected the consciences of all with regard to abortion is the Hyde
amendment. The House courageously included an amendment applying the
Hyde policy to its Health Care bill passed in November. Its absence
in the Senate bill and the resulting impasse are not an accident.
Those in the Senate who wanted to purge the Hyde amendment from this
national legislation are obstructing the reform of health care.
This is not quibbling over technicalities. The deliberate omission
in the Senate Bill of the necessary language that could have taken
this moral question off the table and out of play leaves us still
looking for a way to meet the President’s and our concern to provide
health care for those millions whose primary care physician is now
an emergency room doctor. As Pope Benedict told Ambassador to the
Holy See Miguel H. Diaz when he presented his credentials as the
United States government’s representative to the Holy See, there is
“an indissoluble bond between an ethic of life and every other
aspect of social ethics.”
Two basic principles, therefore, continue to shape the concerns of
the Catholic bishops: health care means taking care of the health
needs of all, across the human life span; and the expansion of
health care should not involve the expansion of abortion funding and
of polices forcing everyone to pay for abortions. Because these
principles have not been respected, despite the good that the bill
under consideration intends or might achieve, the Catholic bishops
regretfully hold that it must be opposed unless and until these
serious moral problems are addressed.
