Catholic doctors' group rips health-care proposal
March 19, 2010
The Catholic Medical Association (CMA), a group representing American Catholic doctors, has issued a strong statement of opposition to the health-care reform bill pending in Congress.
The group’s statement echoes the charge of Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput that other organizations such as the Catholic Health Association (which represents hospital administrators) and Network (a liberal religious lobby) have done a “grave disservice” to the Church with their public break from the US bishops’ opposition to the proposed reform legislation.
The CMA statement emphasizes the legislation’s approach to abortion, saying that the bill would provide “multiple new streams of funding for abortions.” The bill also fails to protect the consciences rights of health-care providers, the doctors’ group says.
CMA goes further in its condemnation of the bill, however, saying that the problems extend beyond abortion. The bill puts government in charge of health-care decisions, the doctors’ group says, and that is “an approach that is flawed in principle and ineffective, if not dangerous, in practice.”
The CMA also criticizes the legislation’s handling of immigrants, and says the cost of the bill is “unsustainable from an economic standpoint.”
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Posted by: -
Mar. 19, 2010 2:05 PM ET USA
here are certainly legitimate reasons for people of Christian conscience to oppose health care reform as currently constituted. This report cites those and, in my opinion, should stop at that. However, the "subsidiarity" argument is so poorly reasoned as to risk undercutting all of the arguments raised previously. One need only cite the fact that many states have only one or at most two insurers that functionally do the very same things that this report would criticize the government for.
