Health care proposals currently going through the House of Representatives have met with a mixed reaction from US bishops, praising “critical life protections” but taking issue with other “troubling” issues under consideration.
In a letter to House members about the American Health Care Act, introduced to repeal 2010’s Affordable Care Act, the chair of the US hierarchy’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development wrote: “By restricting funding which flows to providers that promote abortion and prohibiting federal funding for abortion or the purchase of plans that provide abortion – including with current and future tax credits – the legislation honours a key moral requirement for our nation’s health care policy.”
Venice, Florida’s Bishop Frank Dewane criticised the bill’s failure to provide conscience protection against obligations to provide coverage for contraception and other services that have been “the subject of large-scale litigation especially involving religious entities like the Little Sisters of the Poor”.
Warning
He also described the bill’s Medicaid-related provisions as “very troubling”, warning that they would have “sweeping impacts, increasing economic and community costs while moving away from affordable access for all”.
Predicted that the bill could leave as many as 24 million additional people uninsured over the next 10 years, Dr Dewane said the US bishops believe “all people and every family must be able to see clearly how they will fit within and access the health care system in a way that truly meets their needs”.
Other issues that “must be addressed” before the measure is passed, he said, included a tax credit system that could limit health care affordability for older and poorer people, high insurance premiums for older people, and high surcharges for those who do not maintain continuous coverage.
Recalling how the US bishops “registered serious objections” when the Affordable Care Act was introduced, Dr Dewane warned that “in attempting to improve the deficiencies of the ACA, health care policy ought not create other unacceptable problems, particularly for those who struggle on the margins of our society”.
His letter follows a previous one from New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Baltimore’s Archbishop William Lori, and Austin, Texas’s Bishop Joe Vasquez, who chair the US bishops’ pro-life, religious liberty, and migration committees.