Do I have to support universal health care?

[Arodr32]

I have been reading documents from the USCCB that seem to suggest that I, as a Catholic, have a moral obligation to support state-sponsored universal health-care coverage. Is this the case?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Without knowing what you were reading and being able to examine them, I do not know what the documents you read were trying to say. So, I can only examine the question on its own merit and not on what may or may not have been said by the USCCB.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

The political community has a duty to honor the family, to assist it, and to ensure especially:

• the freedom to establish a family, have children, and bring them up in keeping with the family’s own moral and religious convictions;
• the protection of the stability of the marriage bond and the institution of the family;
• the freedom to profess one’s faith, to hand it on, and raise one’s children in it, with the necessary means and institutions;
• the right to private property, to free enterprise, to obtain work and housing, and the right to emigrate;
• in keeping with the country’s institutions, the right to medical care, assistance for the aged, and family benefits;
• the protection of security and health, especially with respect to dangers like drugs, pornography, alcoholism, etc.;
• the freedom to form associations with other families and so to have representation before civil authority (CCC 2211, emphasis added).

Note that this does not establish how access to proper medical care must be provided, only that a political community such as a country has an obligation to respect and provide for – to the extent that it is capable – each family’s right to adequate medical care.