The following is a statement from Sr. Patricia Chappell, SNDdeN, Executive Director of Pax Christi USA, on the Supreme Court’s ruling regarding the Affordable Care Act.
The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is an important step toward the ultimate goal of achieving quality, affordable health care for all of our citizens. While the ACA is not a perfect piece of legislation, it has moved our society closer to asserting that healthcare is a basic human right and that everyone should have access to it, regardless of one’s ability to pay. We are encouraged by the fact that the ACA will lead to health care coverage for millions of Americans who have not previously been able to afford it or who fell outside of the social safety net provided by Medicaid and other government programs. But the Supreme Court’s decision is not the end of this struggle. We must continue to work for a healthcare system that recognizes the basic human dignity of every person and assures that our most vulnerable and impoverished citizens are cared for. This is central to who we are as people of faith, and it is a vision for our world to which the best of our religious traditions call us. The Court’s decision is a step in the right direction, but more work remains to be done. With this victory, let us pledge ourselves anew to work for a society that reflects our most deeply-held values.
The poor always have to be considered. Sister is correct.
Edited version:
Dear Sr. Chappell, The greatest teacher I ever had was an Ursuline Nun who was very active in Junior Achievement. I had her in the first and fifth grades and then met her again forty five years later while she was still teaching in the ghetto. She taught us self reliance and responsibility. I know for a fact she would be totally against government health care. She would say, and she always taught us, that anything the government gets involved in becomes more expensive and less effective. She was a very wise lady and as far as I know most of her students, white, black, hispanic and oriental became highly successful. It it a shame to watch the youth of today taught to become dependent on the government for their every need. I feel so sorry for them, and I fear for the future of this country.
The question is, Is the government for “we the people” or for corporations. I believe the government should work for the people, to take care of their health and well being, to fix roads, to provide good clean water and air, to insure our products are safe. We are the only industrialized country without national healthcare. We pay our taxes to the government and it gets re-distributed to those who need it. Unfortunately, “we the people” don’t always benefits from it. Don’t buy into the “government is bad”. They are the only ones who have the ability and the responsibility to do these things for you. Remember, private companies are responsible to their stockholders. They are out for profit, not “we the people”
Thank God for Sr. Chappell and the the many others who will be continuing the good fight. I will pray for them every night and continue to support their uphill battle against those extremists, who fight them every step of the way.
“Extremists”?? Are you referring to people like me who want to limit the power of the federal government to the powers contained in the constitution? I’ll stand with the Catholic Bishops who unanimously and vigorously oppose this illegal and unjust mandate. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/next-battle-catholic-bishops-unanimous-our-vigorous-opposition-unjust-and-illegal. And Maria I will ‘re-distibute’ my money to those I want to, this is not the function of the Federal Government, never has been, and never will be. This out-of-control – out of touch administration is so far extreme to the left, we might as well be living in Communist China. Socialism is a cancer upon this earth and must be eradicated.
Patrick, Patrick, Patrick!! You are so correct in all you say but do you think the anti-bishop rhetoric one finds from this “progressive” site is going to change? I pray it does….Jack D.
Jack, I didn’t think ‘progressives’ socialists, democrats, communists or whatever you want to call them, like Nancy Pelosi, Katherine Sebilious, John Kerry, or various Kennedy’s were allowed to go to communion due to their abortion stances!! They preach compassion but their compassion has destroyed the black family. I truly admire the blacks who have managed to reject their ‘gifts’ and have gotten off the plantation. Universal, single payer healthcare is an abomination which will ruin the greatest health care system on earth.
I became involved with Pax Christi because of its promotion of a spirituality of nonviolence, living out the ethic of “Love of Enemy.” I’m saddened to come here and read this series of blogs where invective reigns over respectful dialogue.
Hi Thomas, this is Johnny from the PCUSA staff. I moderate the comments section on the site. Typically I allow people to have their say in the comments section, even if they disagree with our positions. As long as the comments are not obscene, do not contain personal attacks, and do not state as facts things which are simply untrue, I usually allow the post. I think the comments section is a good place for discussion or dialogue, and I leave it to our commenters to respond or to reply to other commenters as they feel it is warranted. As I mention above, there are comments I will not allow to be posted when they breach a certain standard of civility, but I’d rather allow commenters to correct or persuade one another instead of simply deleting alternate opinions. Even for those who disagree with our positions, I am glad to have them coming to our website and hearing and seeing things which are different than or even challenging to their own worldview. Thanks for your comment.
I believe in dialogue based on as much evidence as we can muster – because it’s too easy to just pull back into our cul-de-sacs of ‘tribal’ allegiance and talk past each other. So, with respect to ACA, we need to base our moral analysis of the law on what we can reasonably know about the law (vs. what the spin is).
Now 2700 pages filled with clauses that grant federal bureaucrats great leeway “as the secretary may decide” is guaranteed to create a rules book totalling tens of thousands of pages. In this sense it’s uncontroversial that the law will be constantly changing, as the myriad of sub-sections are implemented according to various discretionary decisions of Federal civil servants. Point being…. Nancy Pelosi was right – we can’t know the full impact (and thus full moral status) of this law until it’s implemented by these thousands of disparate government officials.
But we can know some general things about the law. It’s about mechanisms to transfer wealth from Citizen A to Citizen B, via forced purchase of both private insurance and public insurance policies. It is NOT ABOUT INCREASING THE NUMBER OF HOSPITALS, CLINICS AND DOCTORS. In other words, as demand for health care goes up, the supply of actual care is either stagnant or in decline as the regulatory costs to doctors and other health care providers only go up…. So while on paper 100% of Americans may be “covered”, inasmuch as actual supply is being held down by law, we are not likely to see an increase in quality and quantity of actual care.
If I’m mistaken in this assessment I’d love to be shown where. Has anyone heard of a new hospital being built thanks to this new law? Anyone hear of doctors openning new clinics and thus pushing costs down thanks to this law? No. Instead thanks to the HHS mandate we’re facing a potential loss of 1/6th of all health care providers should the Catholic networks be shuttered (or the nationalisation/seizure of these facilities).
So tribal political allegiance aside, looking just at the known effects of this law, are we really sure that the poor will have not just coverage but actual access to quality health care when they need it vs. “coverage” on paper but low quality care that requires long waiting periods to obtain?