The Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962) narrowly passed in the House yesterday (7 November 2009). Many things remain to be done before it or anything like it can become law — so many things that sclerosis is too mild a word for the absurdist nightmare of our legislative system (if this is democracy, why are we so eager to export it)?
But something has happened, and although no one could love the bill’s prose, there is a trace of beauty in what it promises. Tens of millions of those who live and work in the USA have, at the moment, nothing better than the desperate emergency-room visit when they are sick. They may have something better if something like this bill eventually becomes law — the possibility of regular visits to a doctor, of prenatal care, of treatment before an illness has reached the point of irreversibility, and so on.
Even the trace of such a vision (and there’s scarcely more than that in H.R. 3962) should make every Catholic rejoice. This is all the more so since the bill passed yesterday does include the Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts-Kaptur-Dahlkemper-Lipinski-Smith Amendment aimed at preserving the status quo ante with respect to federal funding of abortion. This means (or may mean if it remains in place, which is far from guaranteed) that abortions will not be funded, either directly or indirectly, with federal funds, and that is good. Healthcare has nothing to do with the deliberate taking of life.
But the Act, as it now is, remains very imperfect from a Catholic (and indeed from any reasonable) point of view. I hope very much that as the legislative process winds wearily onward through the next month or two we — we Catholics, that is, and, perhaps even we Americans — can keep the two-point vision given below in mind. It’s a simple one, and although it won’t answer all particular questions, it will, if you let it, shape your imagination in such a way that you’ll be able to see what counts and what doesn’t, what this debate should be about and what it shouldn’t.
- Healthcare is about health. The deliberate taking of life has nothing to do with it.
- Healthcare is for everyone who needs it. It should be easily available to everyone who lives here. Other matters (immigration status, employment status, insurance coverage, capacity to pay) are a diversion.
