God and Health Care Reform

There are plenty of things wrong with the American health care system: It is inefficient. Ineffective high cost services can waste resources while more effective low cost services are often underused. The private market distorts risk-spreading. Private insurance companies, like any private businesses, try to maximize profits. They do so by trying to sell more policies while minimizing risk. As a result, they often exclude high cost treatments, avoid enrolling people with pre-existing conditions, and impose arbitrary barriers to coverage. However, the worst flaw of the system is that it denies health care to people who do not have access to government-run plans, such as Medicare and Medicaid, or are too poor to obtain private coverage.

It is not surprising that most parties in the debate over health care reform care about their own interests. Doctors and hospitals want to protect their fees. Insurance companies want to protect their premiums. Companies that provide health care products and services do not want to suffer a loss of revenue. And the great majority of Americans, those with more or less adequate health care coverage, want to keep it without paying more. The ultimate result of all these constituencies looking after themselves may doom efforts to change the system, even though polls at the beginning of the debate showed a large majority in favor of reform.

What does God have to do with all of this? Go back to the basic flaw in the system: the uninsured who do not have access to care or who receive care on an ad hoc basis in emergency rooms. You can be sure that this group does not have lobbyists in Washington walking the halls of Congress looking after them. They watch the debate from outside Washington, often wondering what it is about. Ironically, they are often the ones who protest the reform bills most loudly because they have been led to think there are “death panels,” President Obama is going to take away the little coverage they have, or they will have no choice about doctors.

The only way to break the logjam over health care reform is for all us – at least to some extent – to put aside self interest in favor of loving our neighbor. Is that an unrealistic, even laughable, idea? Perhaps. But every major religion has endorsed the core of Jesus’ famous answer to the rabbis when asked to name the most important of God’s laws. He answered with two laws not one: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. In this case, our neighbors include those people without decent health insurance coverage. That is why the churches have a greater role to play in the health care reform debate. That is why all those who profess to believe in God, in fact, to love God, need to stop thinking only about themselves as Congress considers what to do about our deeply flawed health care system.