The Christian’s responsibility to healthcare.

This is not what I think about Obamacare, but more about whether the U.S. government should be in the healthcare business at all.

I’ll start with the boring civics lecture first. I figure I have to. Most folks don’t understand why one side or the other believes as they do, and think it’s ’cause they’re selfish or insane. That’s usually how they describe one another. But it’s much more basic than that.

The healthcare debate in the United States comes from two debates that conservatives and progressives are having with one another:

• Is healthcare a right?
• Is it best provided by the government?

There are exceptions, but primarily conservatives say no to both, and progressives say yes to both.

Fundamentally a conservative’s focus is on rights—natural rights, like Thomas Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence. A natural right is a trait that every human has built into them by the Creator. The conservative believes the purpose of government is to defend these rights. Thomas Jefferson stated they were self-evidently equality, pursuing happiness, liberty, and life. Every human is naturally alive, until something kills them. Every human is naturally free, until someone imposes restrictions upon them. Every human is naturally self-focused, until obligated to think of others. Every human is created equal to every other human—although this last concept has been greatly debated by racists, sexists, eugenicists, and social Darwinists, all of whom tend to be oddly (and annoyingly) fond of conservatism.

However health is not part of the natural state of every human. Darn near everyone seems to have something wrong with them. It seems illness is the natural state of everyone. Everyone has problems, everyone gets sick, everyone dies. Ergo, health is not a natural right. Government’s business is to defend life, but the quality of that life falls under pursuing happiness. Therefore healthcare is up to the individual.

Fundamentally a progressive’s focus is on freedoms. Not that people don’t have rights, and not that government shouldn’t defend rights. But government should do more than that, and extend freedoms to the people as far as is reasonable. These would include freedom of speech, religion, assembly, petition… and that’s just the First Amendment. These things are not natural rights, you notice; they had to be enumerated in the Constitution. While a person is free to say whatever comes into their head, another person is equally free to punch them in that head because of it. You may notice throughout history that this tends to happen more often than not. But not in the United States. We have constitutional protections. We may say whatever comes into our heads—and only half the time will you get punched in the head. (The rest of the time people will just assassinate your character.)

The purpose of freedoms is to facilitate the natural rights. We have a natural right to life; progressives figure that freedoms will help us have a good life. Other than the suffering you create for yourself—if you make your bed, you lie in it—government ought to remove, as far as it is reasonable, any hinderances that inhibit that freedom.

You’ll notice that the progressive point of view is a lot more liberal than the conservative point of view. It adds to freedoms rather than limits itself to defending existing freedoms. Conservatives don’t like this idea because they perceive it encroaches upon, or even eliminates, existing freedoms—or, in some cases, defining as a “freedom” something that conservatives feel shouldn’t be a freedom.

The debate now is whether or not it is reasonable to tackle the hinderance of sickness and disability. Considering how many other countries have nationalized healthcare, and made it work, and partly due to this now have a greater standard of living and life expectancy than the United States—it’s hard to argue that we can’t tackle healthcare and make it a freedom. The question now is whether we should.

While many progressives admit that government-run healthcare is not the ideal, they figure government-provided healthcare is much more likely to be fair to all Americans. For-profit (and even non-profit) healthcare tends to shun expensive patients—namely, the desperately ill, the chronically ill, or the dying: the people who need healthcare the most. It also tends to shun the poor, who can’t afford treatment. Government-provided healthcare will, if done right, leave no one behind.

Conservatives admit that the for-profit system is broken, and the non-profit system has its problems as well. But since healthcare isn’t a right, it doesn’t need to be provided for by government, and the prospect of government taking over a portion of the economy violates their free-market sensibilities.

And there’s our current debate. Civics lesson over.

In the United States, the Christian point of view about government’s role in healthcare largely appears to depend upon the politics of the individual Christian. The Christian Right objects to the idea, and the Christian Left is all for it.

The Christian Right’s concern, as they put it, is that government-provided healthcare will demand certain obligations of doctors that Christians may find objectionable. Doctors might be required to perform abortions for women who request them. Doctors might be required to “pull the plug” on terminally ill patients. The worries are that certain doctors may be forced to perform these actions against their objections, and that certain patients may be forced to have these actions performed upon their loved ones against their objections. No prolife Christian wants their tax dollars going towards abortions or euthanasia. (And, of course, there’s something ungodly about something that interferes with the free market; it sounds vaguely Communist or something.)

The Christian Left’s concern is that the poor will remain uninsured, untreated, and dying, and that the concerns of the Christian right, while valid, are not enough of a reason to leave others in suffering. But, lest I make the Christian left sound too noble, I should point out that some of them are perfectly willing to accept abortion and euthanasia in a government healthcare plan. Some figure these are necessary evils that one has to concede before a plan can be passed, and that the important thing is to pass a plan, and remove the objectionable bits later. Others figure abortion and euthanasia should be available options; who are we to impose Christian views upon others? And still others believe there’s nothing wrong with abortion or euthanasia, in certain extreme circumstances, so it’s nice to have the option available.

The Christian libertarian—whether far-right or far-left—of course wants the government out of the equation altogether.

All these folks, of course, have dug up every verse they can find that puts Jesus on their side. Both note that Jesus, back in bible times, healed the sick. The Right points out that He did so as an individual subject of the Roman Empire, with no dispensation from the government, and that the government (the Pharisees, anyway) objected to His private practice. The Left points out that Jesus is the government, regardless of whether the Pharisees recognized Him as such; that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that He likewise sent disciples to heal the sick, and that He obviously means for it to be an important facet of His Kingdom.

I do think the Christian Left’s argument is a lot more consistent with who Jesus is than the Christian Right’s argument. They’re still wrong, though. Neither really talk about how He heals the sick now; the popular saying is, after all, “What would Jesus do?” not, “What does Jesus do?” As a result, both their conclusions are flawed.

My starting point is of course what God expects of the individual. Should I, as an individual Christian, help the sick? I’m pretty sure we Christians can agree that Jesus cared for the sick. He’s known for healing them. He cares for them still.

When Jesus described following the second-greatest command, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” (Lv 19.18) He did so with the story of the good Samaritan: a man beaten half to death by highwaymen, who was ignored by two religious folks from his own nation, but helped by some foreign heretic. We tend to focus on the unloving behavior of the priest and the Levite who passed the victim by; or we focus on the graciousness, kindness, and generosity of the Samaritan. We might also notice that the sort of aid the Samaritan provided was, in fact, healthcare.

Coming up, he bandaged his injuries, pouring olive oil and wine. Setting him on his own animal, he took him to a hostel and took care of him. In the morning, taking out two denarii, he gave them to the hosteler and said, “Take care of him. If you spend more on him, I, at my return, will repay you.” (Lk 10.34-35 KWL)

When Jesus comes in His glory, and gathers the nations before Himself to judge them, He will of course point out that one of the things He expected of His people was to care for the sick.

“…I was unwell and you checked up on Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.” Then the right ones will answer Him, “Master… when did we see You unwell or in prison and we came to You?” The answering King will tell them, “Amen! I tell you, whatever you did for the least of My family, you did for Me.”

“…I was unwell and in prison and you didn’t check up on Me.” Then they will answer Him, “Master, when did we see You… unwell or in prison and didn’t serve You?” Then He will answer, saying, “Amen! I tell you, whatever you didn’t do for the least of My family, you didn’t do for Me.” (Mt 25.35, 39-40, 43-46 KWL)

Considering how frequently we read about Jesus healing the sick, it stands to reason that He would expect His followers to do the same as He did. And when He sent them out to heal, healing was one of His directions.

“Heal unwell people, raise dead people, cleanse lepers, throw out daemons. You took freely; give freely.” (Mt 10.8 KWL)

Since this is what Jesus expects of the individual Christian, it stands to reason that this is what Jesus expects of His Church as a whole. Yes, He wants us to preach the gospel; yes, He wants us to train up Christian disciples in righteousness. Part of their training should be in healing the sick.

Some argue that Jesus’s directions only applied to the disciples He sent out at that time, or that they only refer to supernatural healing. I would argue first that Jesus’s disciples, at that time and ever since, healed the sick. It used to be part of the Church’s function to heal the sick. The first hospitals were founded by Christians who were following Jesus’s mandate to heal the unwell. Secondly, the ancients made no distinction between natural and supernatural cures. Even if we performed some form of treatment, like putting a spit-mud poultice onto the eyes of a blind man, (Jn 9.6) God was still recognized as the healer. (Jn 9.32-33) Even though we now know a lot more about the science behind medicinal cures, this changes nothing about the God who works through medical science.

But as we learned more about medical science—as the practice of medicine became more complicated, and required more education—we Christians slowly stepped away from the responsibility of funding and equipping hospitals, and left it to the doctors. While this seemed to be responsible, it actually wasn’t. The doctors didn’t want to manage the hospitals; they rightly wanted to focus their attention on healing the sick. And in the absence of the Church managing the hospitals, and in the absence of the Church’s moral and ethical guidance, management fell to other interests—folks who realized that one could actually make money running a health maintenance organization. Hence our problem.

What used to be a charity has, over the past two centuries, become a money-making enterprise. Charity went out the window. Nor do the entrepreneurs have any interest in charity coming back into their enterprise. Nor, thanks to the expenses now involved in running a hospital, can the charities easily get back into providing healthcare. Indeed, the public generally has this sense that charities have no business running a hospital; that HMOs are too expensive for anyone but the solid money-managing types to supervise.

We Christians could organize and pool a massive amount of money, use it to fund hospitals, and provide healthcare the way it’s meant to be provided, as an example to HMOs everywhere. Conservatives would applaud that action, and call it fair competition. But the last thing it would be is fair. In countries without national healthcare, where such charity hospitals exist, the HMOs dispense with their chronically, desperately, and terminally ill cases, dump them upon the charities, and maximize their profits, rather than use those profits to fund the needy.

Seems to me the only way to put fairness into the system is to legislate it into place.

I agree with the conservatives that we shouldn’t trust the government. Governments are made up of, and run by, humans, and humans are selfish. Someone’s gonna try to make money or gain power off government-provide healthcare. This happens in other countries. But in those other countries—unlike in the United States—because healthcare is a public concern, it receives public scrutiny. In the U.S., healthcare is a private concern, so it receives no scrutiny from anyone but investors, patients, victims, and the occasional muckraking reporter. Conservatives don’t trust the press—that is, they only trust the conservative press—but if we’re all watching how the government runs healthcare, it’s a lot less likely to get away with anything heinous… in comparison with what for-profit healthcare gets away with now.

I also agree with the progressives in that no government plan is going to be perfect. The important thing is that we have some plan rather than none. I don’t want to fund any doctors that can live with the idea of terminating life. But, in not providing healthcare to the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured, I have a much bigger problem with the millions of apathetic Christians who can live with the idea of allowing poor people’s lives to end, miserably.

I know; I didn’t precisely answer the two questions at the beginning of this rather-long piece that conservatives and progressives are debating. I don’t care to. They’re asking the wrong questions. Healthcare is the responsibility of every follower of Christ Jesus. If everyone isn’t receiving it, we need to change things so that they can. Whether it’s a right or not is moot. Whether we should handle it directly, or indirectly through our government, is I think determined by matters of practicality—if you can do it yourself more practically than the government can, by all means do it. Otherwise I believe the practical thing involves voting in a plan that will help rich and poor alike, employed and unemployed alike. I don’t care if you call it socialism. I call it Christian.

The August ’09 synchroblog.

We synchrobloggers supposed this topic is relevant enough to be the subject for August, and there are a few others who discussed on the same thing. Their links are below. Pick something off the pop-up menu and click, “Doctor, doctor, gimme the news!”

Susan Barnes: “Carrying your own load.” Kimber Caldwell: “Is health care a right?” Liz Dyer: “A Christian perspective on health care reform.” Kathy Escobar: “It’s easy to be against health care reform when you have insurance.” Ellen Haroutunian: “Christian perspectives on health care.” Jeff Goins: “A Christian response to health care in America.” Stephen Hayes: “Self-evident truths and moral turpitude.” K.W. Leslie: “The Christian’s responsibility to healthcare.” Beth Patterson: “Baby steps toward more humane humanity.” Lainie Petersen: “Caring for human dignity.” Phil Wyman: “Clowns to the left? Jokers to the right? Stuck in the middle of the health care debate.”