To be fair, most priests have no idea of how family finances work. When I was a college seminarian, the rector freaked out because I had an economics course through the college’s experimental honors program. He later became a bishop and talked about how our families treated our servants for his example of economic justice. As far as I know, his family was the only one in the chapel whose family ever had servants at home. He may have had good intentions, but he was clueless about financial matters.
I have been without health insurance for all but 6 months since 1994. For more than two decades before that, I had fully paid insurance through employers and never used it even once. The premiums for individual policies I looked at periodically were priced way too high for someone with low risks. I have always saved part of my earnings and earned an investment return higher that what insurance companies earn, so I have saved enough to pay my own costs for normal health problems. In less than six months I can get Medicare and you hard working younger people will be stuck with me. Then I can get as sick as I want.
The point of all this is that I agree with you and not the horribly misinformed priest. Insurance is only one of the responsible ways to pay for medical care.
When was the last time you heard this priest talk about the sinfulness of gluttony and other anti-life behaviors that raise the cost of health care for everyone else? I have only heard the word gluttony used from the pulpit once in the last 40 years, and that was from one our African priests on his last Sunday in our parish. Imagine if you can the cultural shock of coming from a place where people suffer and die from not having enough to eat to a place where people suffer and die from eating too much.
