Rich Wentzel: Bishops are wrong on ‘Obamacare’

 

 

Rich Wentzel: Bishops are wrong on ‘Obamacare’

 

July 09, 2012 4:30 am  •  Rich Wentzel

Dear Editor: A few years back, Pope Benedict XVI and other church leaders said it was “the moral responsibility of nations to guarantee access to health care for all of their citizens, regardless of social and economic status or their ability to pay.” Now, however, Cardinal Timothy Dolan through the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is promoting a campaign to curb the implementation of an aspect of the Affordable Care Act, specifically that aspect requiring insurance companies to provide contraceptives as preventive care. The claim is that somehow this violates religious freedom even though no Catholic would be asked to use contraceptives.

Jesus did not bow to the authoritarian hierarchy of the ruling religion and saw his own way to the truth, much as the majority of Catholics have done on the contraception issue. In their obsession with blocking women’s access to birth control, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops seems intent on thwarting the work being done to provide access to a more coherent, affordable plan for health care in our nation.

The Affordable Care Act offers greater care to more people at lower cost as a nation. Dolan’s plan would thwart that goal by keeping the overall pool of participants smaller and continuing to drive health care costs up. In the end, he is asking Catholics and non-Catholics alike to pay more while trying to block a worthy moral and economic goal.

Rich Wentzel

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