Because of congressional rules and partisan politics, Democratic leaders are pushing the House to adopt the Senate version. The Catholic Health Association, which represents 2,000 health care sponsors, systems, hospitals, and long-term facilities, calls the Senate bill a “major first step” toward covering all Americans. CHA officials say the abortion language can be “corrected” after it passes.
George acknowledged the CHA’s difference of opinion. “The bishops, however, judge that the flaws are so fundamental that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to promote,” he said.
“Assurances that the moral objections to the legislation can be met only after the bill is passed seem a little like asking us, in Midwestern parlance, to buy a pig in a poke,” he said.
It is my understanding that the RC Church in America, via its bishops, opposes the health care bill not only because of abortion, but because it would not extend health care coverage to persons illegally in the country (aka “undocumented”).
The RC church continues to grow in the USA, largely due to the influx of immigrants from Catholic-majority countries, particularly Mexico. Although I do not have data handy, it seems to me that on the basis of generational continuity (today’s descendants of the prior Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholics), the RC church is bleeding membership at least as fast as TEC and ELCA.