Govt Healthcare Morally Deficient

In Guest Commentary: “Health care reform: A Catholic priority.” George Wesolek, archdiocesan director of Public Policy writes: “It is a scandal 45 million Americans have no health care coverage, or inadequate coverage and access” (CSF, Oct. 9) Indeed health care is a Catholic priority, and Catholics deserve an accurate account of this moral imperative. Numbers are instructive: The cliché that 45 million Americans lack health insurance is incorrect. The U.S. Census Bureau reports nine million uninsured earn over $75,000 and eight million earn over $50,000 but do not purchase health insurance. An additional ten million are eligible for Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP or employer plans, but are not enrolled. The nine million (or more) Americans that need financial assistance can be insured via options that will keep America’s health care the best in the world: Vouchers for low income persons; group plans, portability, inter-state purchases, tax deductions, medical savings accounts and risk assignment pools for pre existing conditions. Another ten million uninsured in America are not U.S. Citizens; none can be denied treatment in a U.S. Hospital, nevertheless they also could have access to health insurance, and helped with vouchers, etc. This will require comprehensive immigration reform that will end illegal sanctuary policies that subjugate undocumented persons to exploitation by violent criminals, unscrupulous employers and worse; self-serving political and social demagogues. Mr. Wesolek reports the Catholic Bishops and Archdiocese of San Francisco are calling for universal health care that protects life from conception to death as a “moral imperative;” and it certainly is. However, the Second Vatican Council reaffirmed that “error has no rights, but humans do.” All Catholics have a right to be wrong about universal health care controlled by government. It has proven morally deficient; it makes the fatal error of dismissing the ”inalienable” right to life. Every country with universal health coverage admits it restricts or denies medical treatment to certain elderly, disabled, terminally ill and newly born. Great Britain and other single payer nations use the “Quality Adjusted Life Years” system (QALY) to determine treatment based upon cost and patient age; renal dialysis centers in these countries send patients over age 65 home to die. In the Netherlands neonatal intensive care units permit infanticide by lethal injection. In 650 BC. Spartans used a simpler system; they left frail elderly and sickly infants on a hillside to die. Every year thousands of sick people leave Canada, England and E.U. countries to seek treatment in the U.S. Last year 39,282 came from Canada where the Supreme Court has ruled; “Access to a waiting list is not health care.” These wealthy single payer nations have less doctors, less MRI and CT scanners, less beds per capita, longer waits for diagnosis and treatment and higher mortality rates for cancer and heart disease. In Italy health officials criticize their government for not investing in modern drugs and equipment. The entire European Union with wealth greater than the U.S. accounts for only 16% of the world's biotech research; the U.S. invests (risks) 78% for new drugs and technologies that save millions of lives, especially in poor third world nations- this is a moral imperative universal health care ignores. All Catholic advocates of universal government health care should heed the wisdom of Pope Benedict XV: “We do not need a state which regulates and controls everything, but a State that supports social forces closest to those in need. The State that would provide and absorb everything into itself becomes a bureaucracy incapable of the very thing the suffering person needs most: loving personal concern.” Benedict rejects statist demagogues; everyone should. Mike DeNunzio is a California Commissioner on Aging and former San Francisco Commissioner on Aging Adult Services.