I’m taking a quick break from preparing for tomorrow’s meetings with the Examinations Committee and Committee on Ministry of Salem Presbytery to put down some thoughts about the passage of the healthcare reform bill offered by Congressional Democrats and signed into law yesterday by President Barack Obama. 
I realize that by doing this I am inviting very vehement disagreement from all sorts of people, especially those who stand in opposition to the bill. Be that as it may.
Perhaps one of the most grievous aspects of popular commentary on healthcare reform has been the repeated assertion that the bill socializes one sixth of the American economy. This is patently not true. The bill doesn’t establish an American equivalent to Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). The foundation of this reform remains private insurance, but makes significant alterations in how private insurance does business. It also provides a government-administered alternative to private insurance.
These are requirements that are intended to drive down the cost of health insurance (mandating coverage and expanding groups by outlawing discrimination based on pre-existing conditions to name two). For a more detailed summary of the legislation go here.
My take: Clearly this is not a mass takeover of the insurance industry but rather a very moderate approach to policing (regulating) the excesses of the insurance industry and providing alternative solutions for those for whom the traditional US insurance industry is basically unavailable. It’s unfortunate that the Republican party has chosen to retrench on this issue rather than engage the President and the Democratic party. This belligerence is, amongst several other more profound reasons, a contributing factor to my identification as an independent (in North Carolina, “unaffiliated”) voter. While I am pro-life, I cannot bring myself to cast this entire discussion and debate in terms of this issue. There is nothing in the legislation itself that materially alters the present U.S. policy of not using tax dollars to fund abortions and the willingness of President Obama to sign an Executive Order to guarantee that the law is not construed in such a manner as to vitiate this interpretation shows a pragmatism which is, I believe, laudable. In short, abortion is a great evil. But it is an evil that is predicated on presuppositions and ways of understand the self, community, life, and worth that are rooted in the very same constructs conservatives laud as what makes America “great” (viz., individualism, consumerism, to name just two).
It seems to me to be folly to select one profound evil to oppose, but to do so in the absence of a real and lively critique of the system out of which this issue has arisen. This is where the Catholic church provides a real and meaningful contribution to the life of the broader church and to society in general. This is one reason that I envision my political identity more in terms of distributivism than classical distinctions between the left and the right. More on distributivism here.
One Christian organization claimed that pro-life Democrats who voted “yes” to the legislation after President Obama’s concession in the form of an Executive Order, had traded their birth right for a “mess of pottage.” I humbly submit that those who argue against healthcare on the basis of ad hominem, fear, and falsehood rather than standing in the great tradition of Christian moral reflection do no less.
