Diocese of Connecticut Bishop Suffragan James E. Curry, speaking to ENS from the House of Bishops meeting in Camp Allen, Texas, called the legislation “a wonderful step that continues our national walk toward accessibility.” The Episcopal Church’s longstanding commitment to health care reform is deeply rooted in the Baptismal Covenant, he said.
“For 2,000 years followers of Jesus have been at the forefront of efforts to provide for the health and well being of all people. We do this because the law of love compels us to care for everyone,” Diocese of Maryland Bishop Eugene T. Sutton said in an e-mail to ENS. “While people of good will disagree about some controversial provisions in the new health care legislation, in the main, Christians everywhere should rejoice that our society has taken a major step toward ensuring that all citizens have adequate and equitable access to health care without fear that sickness will result in their financial ruin. For that alone we say, ‘Praise God!'”
Curry and Sutton were among the seven Episcopal bishops who travelled to Washington, D.C. in September 2009 to advocate on Capitol Hill for health care reform.
Members and bishops of the Episcopal Church, the church’s Washington-D.C.-based Office of Government Relations, its Episcopal Public Policy Network and the ecumenical faith community continued to advocate for the health bill and press representatives to pass the bill up to March 21, when the bill passed the House by a vote of 219-212.
Who’da thunk when my children were baptized we were committing ourselves and them to Obama’s health care reform bill? I guess I missed the fine print in that Baptismal Covenant.
This ought to be an article in “The Onion.”
1, its gotta be in a footnote somewhere.
For an organization that thinks lawsuits are evangelism, the equation of forced purchase of insurance as the solution Jesus would want is no leap of faith. It is the consequence of fiduciary responsibility, just like taking a 2/3 loss on property to make a point about how much “care is involved in the gozpell. And like giving 0.7% to lobby the government for more programs as “caring for the poor” until the money was needed for more lawsuits.
Consistency and the hobgoblins of little minds!
Just an observation:
ENS has gone down the hole and barely has credibility due to its partnership with all things revisionist. The so-called journalists are hardly so. I’ve noticed that the Opinions Section is entirely gone except fluff pieces and praise for the party line of the PB. I, too, have noted the lean into liberal politics. And, watch out, I’ve noticed that most of the picture space of late have featured a majority of women with what appears to be token men thrown in for some kind of balance.
No wonder they went out of print.
This is actually one of the few political stances TEC has taken that I can get behind, but to imply that they had any real influence at all on the process or result is pretty laughable.
RE: “in the main, Christians everywhere should rejoice that . . . ”
But as with the “gospel” of TEC, oddly, Christians everywhere do not rejoice.
The trend continues.
Last time I looked, in my state I was required to buy car insurance. And not just any insurance sold on the open market, but car insurance sold in NJ only, which is the highest in the nation. And I couldn’t get out of it by paying some “penalty” or minor tax that represented a small fraction of the cost of the actual insurance. Oh sure…I could give up my right to own a car and then basically retire to an assisted living facility or a cloistered convent since I would no longer be able to hold a job, buy groceries, go to the doctor, visit friends, go to the library, church, or just about anything else. This is pretty much the government forcing me to buy a hugely expensive product sold by for-profit companies. And there are no “subsidies” for low-income people, for whom the cost of insurance represents a real burden, or any other hardship waivers. Yet I have heard no calls for a constitutional challenge to this law. Strange.
BTW, here’s another one for you. If you live in a house within a “flood zone”, the mortgage companies force you to buy flood insurance from FEMA or they won’t give you the loan. I live in “flood” zone in the sense that there is a creek down at the end of the road and it floods when we have our huge nor-easters every few years like we just did last week. And then there is water in the streets and water in the basement — unless you have a sump pump and a generator like we do, in which case your house is perfectly fine.
About 20 years ago the Army Corps of Engineers came out and drew a flood map of the township and decided this property was an “A1 Flood Zone” meaning it had a high probablility of flooding. (Note that “A1” doesn’t distinguish between “high probability of having a foot of water in your basement” and “high probablility of having your house washed away.” Our house proper sits above the flood line but the basement is below the flood line.
Yet, if we had a mortgage (which we don’t) we’d have to pay FEMA $1,400 per year for “flood insurance” which (wait for it) DOES NOT COVER DAMAGE TO BASEMENTS!! (In this part of NJ, FEMA would do nothing but pay claims if it did.) So why do we have to buy insurance? Because it’s a deal FEMA worked out with the mortgage companies to make up for the fact that not enough people buy their policies to cover their payments when there are huge floods that people lose their houses in. In effect, if you live in a low-lying area in NJ where your basement regularly gets flooded (which is a huge part of NJ) you have to pay a tax to FEMA to cover their expenses for floods in New Orleans. On the other hand, when your basement gets flooded and your furnace is ruined, FEMA won’t pay you a cent. I find this immoral, illegal, and unconsitutional and want to know where I can find an attorney general willing to go to the Supreme Court with this.
How can any Christian rejoice about $11 trillion debt and $1.5 trillion budget deficit? Not to mention a health care “reform” that supports killing babies. But let’s rejoice about the IRS having access to health insurance records. And finally, McDonalds will be forced to put the calories of the Big Mac on the drive thru menu…who would ever imagine that a Big mac was fattening, unless our govt warns us.
7, you are confusing different sovereigns. Unlike States the Federal Government has limited powers. The states can set highway speed limitets the Federal Government can’t. Now the Fed’s can coerce the States to do something that the Fed’s can’t do by threatening to withhold Federal funds.
You are mixing apples and oranges.
And that is part of what the States are getting at. The Federal government is doing indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly.a
I thought FEMA was a part of the federal government? True — they haven’t directly required you to buy their insurance — they’ve just set it up so you can’t get a mortgage on certain houses if you don’t. And, of course, if a house is built BEFORE the Army Corps of Engineers decides that it’s in a flood plain, you then can’t sell the house without explaining to the new buyers that they can’t get a mortgage without paying $1,400 per year for the life of the mortgage. Notwithstanding that they worst thing that will ever happen to the house is a foot of water in the basement, which is what happens to half the houses in NJ when there’s a big storm even if they’re NOT officially in a “flood plain.”
Up until recent decades, Christian compassion for health needs was expressed by building and running not-for-profit hospitals.
It boggles my mind – “progressive Christians” do not want the government to support classic sexual morality (which is actually best for the state, as it produces reasonably stable families for children to grow up in) – yet they want the state to carry out what they call the mandates for Christian ministries.
Just spoke with my sister. My brother-in-law is a surgeon (a Catholic) who works in a Catholic hospital. I asked my sister how Phil feels about the new bill. She says he is ecstatic. I asked why. She said because every week he sees somebody in their 40s and 50s who is dying of a preventable disease that could have been treated earlier but the person (often a hard working member of the middle class) didn’t have health insurance so they didn’t get the regular treatments they needed. By the time Phil sees them, it’s too late. He comes home and cries. It’s easy to be dismissive about other people’s suffering when you don’t have to be there to watch it happening.
Auto insurance is also tied into being issued a car registration and a driver’ s license. Both of these are under the authority of the State. So the State can make it a requirement that when providing their service the person requesting the service have a minimum amount of insurance.
Brother Michael, I think the civil war might have settled the arguments you imply.
#12 – actually I don’t mind the state providing disincentives for abortion. I think there are ways to do it without making abortion illegal. If we could ensure that having a child did not ensure, for some women, poverty, I bet more women would chose life.
Look, I know that some people hate to pay for things. Like to pay for someone NOT to have an abortion. But it kind of illustrates how important it is. Jesus said something about treasure here.
Of course, I suspect that if Christians truly demonstrated they would care for poor mothers, single mothers by finding them jobs and providing them stability, abortion would scarcely exist. As it is, its easier to condemn women as murderers than to acknowledge we don’t do enough to convince them we’d support them in making alternative choices.
It is all a charade. Our government, the ones we voted in, have said in the last few days that they were going to control the insurance companies and take the profits out of the drug companies. Well, these “profits” are the shareholders profits, not the governments. These profits are personal property of the shareholders of these companies.
Our government is taking our property. This is no exageration. It is real—–
bl
Actually it’s a matter of basic civics. Maybe we need a refresher lesson.
Catholic Mom, a lender can require insurance as a matter of contract.
JW, the Civil War, did not abrogate the Constitution.
JW, do you truly not understand the United States government under the Constitution?
Bob Lee,
The drug companies love this law — that’s why they supported it. It’s one of the bills biggest weaknesses — deals with drug companies that ensure big profits.
Why is it a violation of Church/State separation when Catholic bishops seek protections for the unborn, but not when Episcopal bishops advocate for government health care?
Actually, Catholic bishops seem to be advocating for universal health care without violating Church/State separation, except for the abortion part, of course.
The drug companies and big insurance companies will be fine – the big drug companies lobbied hard for this bill as well as the insurance companies (but, but, but Pres. Obama said he wouldn’t listen to lobbyists!!!). It’s the smaller insurance companies that will be burdened and either go out of business or be bought out. Remember, big government loves big business, and big business loves big government. Also, because the legislation was so poorly written, several huge loopholes have appeared already (now that people can actually read the final bill).
From the AP:
And for now, young adults cannot be added as promised:
You know, it would have been nice if Congress had actually read and studied the bill before voting on it.
Gee…then I guess the Republican party is the party of big business since they are overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of their PAC donations.l
Big business gives plenty to Dems and Repubs. But Wall Street loves Dems!
[Ad hominem comment deleted by Elf]
Catholic Mom, in the past that may have been true, but here’s just one article – from the L.A. Times – from many from the most recent election on the Democrats’ campaign funds from Wall Street:
Oh, and I don’t smoke 🙂
Wasn’t it a Republican (Calvin Coolidge) who said “the business of government is business” ???
Sure — business will throw its money at whoever they’re currently trying to buy (for example, whoever they think will win) but at heart, Wall Street is very Republican. Thanks to our Supreme Court who has decided that a business really is a person with all the constitutional rights of a person, they will continue to throw monstrous sums of money at politicians. Then we will be all shocked when legislation favors the donors.