Archive for March 26th, 2010
The morality of health care
Try as I might, I can’t ignore this political issue. Yet.
There are two moral positions to consider when it comes to so-called “Obamacare”; the universal, or nationalized (i.e. government controlled) health care law of the land. The first is the easy position, which is that there are people in this nation who do not have health insurance. To hold to a belief that such is their tough luck is not only decidedly un-Christian, it’s also immoral. After all, isn’t the moral position one of equality for all and not wanting people to either be unable to seek proper health care, or to be placed in a position of financial ruin if they do? Of course, it’s not as simple an argument as that, because some Americans have access to health insurance but choose to not obtain it. Those folks convolute the situation, but even if we ignore them we still find a substantial number of Americans who do not have health insurance due to legitimate reasons.
On the other side of the coin is the cost of insuring those who are without health insurance because of legitimate reasons. If the cost issue were nothing more than me losing an extra $10 from each paycheck it would be difficult for me to argue against it, given the morality equation involved. If, however, insuring those without imperils the nation at large we encounter the moral issue of whether it is right to help a few at the ultimate great expense of the many. And by “great expense” I mean something beyond personal financial consequence. Read the rest of this entry »
