M
Maxirad
Guest
Is single-payer health care of the universal kind compatible with the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity?
- Status
E
Elizabeth502
Guest
If you’re talking about comprehensive health care, I would tend to think not. If, OTOH, there is some essential-level care which is best funded by the government but delivered locally, I think it could be compatible with other (private & local) sources of health coverage.
However, subsidiarity or not, I think any “essential” level (& content) of care would be subject to review against Catholic values. Right now, as you know, it is considered (by the gov’t) to be “essential” for every resident to have contraceptive coverage, married or not. If that were the terms of any universal care, I could not support it. It is not “essential” to make others pay for anyone else’s recreational and very optional fornication. (Go roll in the hay on your own dime; no one’s stopping you; you just don’t have a right to do so without consequences which you yourself pay for.)
Personally, I am not as interested in the concept of subsidiarity as I am with what I consider (and I believe what the Church considers) larger moral issues in health care.
Back to paragraph one, I am actually for the opportunity for every human being to have some very basic care which they can get some help paying for if they have no means of support. But I do not believe that everyone deserves free comprehensive care in private offices & private hospitals if they have not the means to support those services. I believe in leveled care, so that there is a bare-bones level of coverage, and better levels for those who can afford more. By “better” I do not mean more professional or more expert, I mean more personalized, more comfortable, less waiting, that kind of thing.
This is similar to public education. If you earn enough to live in an expensive suburb with fine public schools, you will in fact have the opportunity, built-in, for a better quality of education (usually). However, that still requires the student to apply himself and the family to supervise. You can also go to a swank private doctor’s office & he will provide you with an expensive Rx or expensive optional tests & treatments, but if you don’t take full advantage of his advice, you may fare no better, healthwise, than a poor patient with bare-bones coverage, who does take the advice of public clinic doctors.
(Some students go to terrible public schools but endure & excel anyway, due to grit and persistence, and a determination to make the most out of humble circumstances.)
Even when I have had excellent health insurance, I have always most profited medically when I took initiative in reading about my health & asking lots of questions and doing my due diligence. It was that that has always made the difference, when I was covered well, when I was covered not so well, and when I was not covered at all.
There is a mistaken notion that I’ve been observing even on CAF, that less-than-expensive coverage for everyone will result in bad health outcomes. I keep going back to the analogy of education, because that is also the prevailing myth in public education: the State assumes that the more money is thrown at a problem, the more will be solved. No, different models of educational delivery, smarter use of educational dollars (including in parochial schools) can provide the same or better results than expensive solutions. Public educational administrators also often disavow subsidiarity but instead support a centralized, single-source delivery of educational programs. That makes for inefficiency and most often a compromised educational product. I think the same can be said for healthcare.
And since on other threads I have enthusiastically supported mid-level clinics (supplanting the overuse of ER’s and the expense of private doctor’s offices), you could say that my testimony is a tacit support of subsidiarity, as these clinics serve the local community and are often paid directly by that local patient using them, and at the time of use. (No layers of bureaucracy; no middle-men.)
However, subsidiarity or not, I think any “essential” level (& content) of care would be subject to review against Catholic values. Right now, as you know, it is considered (by the gov’t) to be “essential” for every resident to have contraceptive coverage, married or not. If that were the terms of any universal care, I could not support it. It is not “essential” to make others pay for anyone else’s recreational and very optional fornication. (Go roll in the hay on your own dime; no one’s stopping you; you just don’t have a right to do so without consequences which you yourself pay for.)
Personally, I am not as interested in the concept of subsidiarity as I am with what I consider (and I believe what the Church considers) larger moral issues in health care.
Back to paragraph one, I am actually for the opportunity for every human being to have some very basic care which they can get some help paying for if they have no means of support. But I do not believe that everyone deserves free comprehensive care in private offices & private hospitals if they have not the means to support those services. I believe in leveled care, so that there is a bare-bones level of coverage, and better levels for those who can afford more. By “better” I do not mean more professional or more expert, I mean more personalized, more comfortable, less waiting, that kind of thing.
This is similar to public education. If you earn enough to live in an expensive suburb with fine public schools, you will in fact have the opportunity, built-in, for a better quality of education (usually). However, that still requires the student to apply himself and the family to supervise. You can also go to a swank private doctor’s office & he will provide you with an expensive Rx or expensive optional tests & treatments, but if you don’t take full advantage of his advice, you may fare no better, healthwise, than a poor patient with bare-bones coverage, who does take the advice of public clinic doctors.
(Some students go to terrible public schools but endure & excel anyway, due to grit and persistence, and a determination to make the most out of humble circumstances.)
Even when I have had excellent health insurance, I have always most profited medically when I took initiative in reading about my health & asking lots of questions and doing my due diligence. It was that that has always made the difference, when I was covered well, when I was covered not so well, and when I was not covered at all.
There is a mistaken notion that I’ve been observing even on CAF, that less-than-expensive coverage for everyone will result in bad health outcomes. I keep going back to the analogy of education, because that is also the prevailing myth in public education: the State assumes that the more money is thrown at a problem, the more will be solved. No, different models of educational delivery, smarter use of educational dollars (including in parochial schools) can provide the same or better results than expensive solutions. Public educational administrators also often disavow subsidiarity but instead support a centralized, single-source delivery of educational programs. That makes for inefficiency and most often a compromised educational product. I think the same can be said for healthcare.
And since on other threads I have enthusiastically supported mid-level clinics (supplanting the overuse of ER’s and the expense of private doctor’s offices), you could say that my testimony is a tacit support of subsidiarity, as these clinics serve the local community and are often paid directly by that local patient using them, and at the time of use. (No layers of bureaucracy; no middle-men.)
S
Swiss_Guy
Guest
Not really. Not to say universal health care is incompatible with subsidiarity though.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
I’m not sure if it even practical to have universal health care without a single-payer. Take pre-existing conditions. If a person with a pre-existing condition moves from one state to another and needs to change insurance companies, then is unfair to the second insurance company to force it to undertake a known losing proposition. At the same time it is unfair to the person with the pre-existing condition to deny him coverage or drastically raise his premiums. He may have done everything right - paying for insurance all his life. Then a simple move to a different state puts him in the same category as freeloaders who try to avoid paying premiums until they get sick. I see no solution to this problem that is fair to all involved because of multiple private-sector payers.
Subsidiarity says that things should be done at a local level where possible. For the reason stated above I don’t think health insurance is a good candidate for very local control. So subsidiarity does not apply in this case.
M
Maxirad
Guest
Go to 20:30 in this video and hear what John Corapi has to say.
- Status