 remarks is unnecessary. I do not argue for a necessary connection between large and impersonal, only a possible relationship. Knights of Columbus of course is a life insurance company, not a health insurance company and one interacts Far less with life insurance companies than with health insurance. All that said, I am not an advocate of government run healthcare per se, as you seem to assume in the tone of your remark. As a Catholic however I do have an interest in being sure that our terminology is properly understood. So stand down with your tea and crumpets stuff. Nobody requires that of you, nobody but Jesus (cf Lk 14:13 inter al. )
One thing that has been left out of this discussion here is the rise of the corporations, especially the healthcare ones. They have grown to such power that they are now able to manipulate the state and her laws for their own benefit. They have turned healthcare away from susidiarity because it was not profitable. Profit has become the end for which they exist and act, not charity. In fact, there are now numerous laws that greatly restrict the charitable activities of physicians. One out of every seven dollars spent in the USA is now spent on healthcare. The giant pharmaceutical companies, the huge conglomerates of hospitals, the massive insurance companies are in it for their slice of the pie. However, profit does not have to be the reason a corporation exists. Lokk at the Knights of Columbus, they are in business for charity. Until charity is once again the focus of the healthcare industry, their quest for profit will continue to steamroller over both the principle of susidiarity and solidarity.
The Knights of Columbus tolerate pro-abortion members.
Is that solidarity, subsidiarity or the quest for profits?
I fail to see why pharmaceutical companies, hospitals or insurance companies would be opposed to charity.
The first two don’t care who buy their products, as long as someone does.
Whether the purchaser uses the products themselves or subsequently gives them away makes no difference to the bottom line.
As for the last two, charity is a positive good. Insofar as someone, say a doctor or other medical professional, willingly donates time or money to care for someone else, the hospital does not need to treat, the insurance company does not need to pay. Why would THEY be opposed to charity? Charity helps their bottom line.
You make these assertions about evil corporations, but they don’t make any sense.
Steve,
That the Knight of Columbus tolerate pro-abortion members is a worn out mantra that has little basis in reality. Shure, some members are pro-choice, but unless they are acting in a pro-choice way or attempting to get a council to do pro-choice things, they are aloud to stay. The K of C is definately not pro-choice and has arguably do more than any other group in the country for the pro-life cause.
Second, charity has to do with persons. They are opposed to charity when they put proffits ahead of people. It is true, that there is no necessity to do so, but the fact that they do is not desputable. How else could pharmacutical companies justify six figure salaries, producing life ending drugs, manipulating safety studies, etc. How could hospitals justify multi-billion dollars profits, turning away the poor or giving-sub them standard care or allowing the harvesting or organs from people that are not yet dead so that they can be sold for profit?
Third, the law forbits a doctor to offer care either in exchange for a another good or service rather than money or for a lesser fee than they charge others. Charity does not help their bottom line. In fact, when charity is asked for, even from “Catholic” hospitals, it is often difficult to apply for, and ussually given out of a funding from charitable donations, not hospital profits.
Blake,
First, members who are publicly pro-choice have no place in the Knights. Bishops have already said this. The Knights refuse to acknowledge it. Would the Knights tolerate members who are publicly racists, anti-Semites or misogynists? If not, how would this be different from baby-haters?
Second, the pro-choice members who are being tolerated are almost all either financially or politically well-connected. Given this fact, how is the K of C NOT putting profits ahead of people?
There is nothing wrong or sinful about profit, and most people do profitable things not for love of people but for concern about their own future. Even millionaires – especially millionaires – realize how fleeting wealth is, and how easily they can lose it all.
If we did not have millionaires, we would have no one to pay for the honor of being guinea pigs for extremely expensive procedures, procedures whose costs drop because millionaires pay for their own treatment, which brings down costs incrementally so semi-millionaires can afford it, which brings down costs more (bigger pool of clients), so quasi-millionaires can afford it, and about twenty years and several iterations later, I can afford it. Without rich people to subsidize the treatment and the working out of the kinks, I would never get it.
Third, you are telling me the government forbids charity.
So, how can it be the case that all these rich people are against charity?
The government is making a law to prevent something that no one is doing?
Really? REALLY?
I believe the law exists – I’m just pointing out that SINCE it exists, your original premise has to be wrong.
It isn’t rich people who oppose charity – it’s the government.
Which is the exact opposite of Peter Brown’s putative point.
Blake is correct on calling you Steve on your charge about the Knights. It is way over the top for you to make this charge. Every Knight swears an oath to be accepting of the Catholic Church’s teaching, to be a practicing Catholic, and the Knights are some of the strongest pro-life warriors and extremely generous to pro-life works. Your charges are at best misinformation, at worse they are calumny.
As you have noticed I have not been able to post all your other remarks on this blog due to your harsh and accusatory tone in general. So the advice I would like to offer is that you tone it down.
We (in the USA) have the most innovative, cutting edge and profitable healthcare system in the world. If we could cut out the dead-weight costs (ie: junk-lawsuits) and go more aggressively after the deadbeats (ie: people who can afford to pay for their care but refuse to), then we would have more than enough resources to provide free care to those who legitimately can’t afford it with no increase in taxes or reductions in quality of care.
Also, I would like to add that just because friendly societies like the Knights of Columbus did not adapt to changing societal and economic needs, does not mean there cannot be new groups formed to address these shortfalls in caring for persons in society.
My plan was (doubt it could be feasible to launch now that we have Obamacare), to have Catholic dioceses or a group of them offer a Catholic Health Care plan to compete with the big carriers. My vision would have this plan cover anyone who wants it, but specifically reach out to the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the terminally ill, anyone who is marginalized in society, etc. and provide care that is fully in-line with Catholic teaching: no abortion, no contraception, no sterilization, no euthanasia, no morally objectionable procedures or medications whatsoever; yet care that respects the dignity of each person. This plan could give preference to Catholic and Christian doctors and hospitals, supporting their work as well. I won’t go into the details of how I would make it work financially, but my point is simply that there ARE ways to ensure “access to health care” without involving the federal government and enforcing mandate upon mandate. If we want to take care of the individuals who need care, let’s do it ourselves and not push the responsibility onto the government.
An old doctor recently told me he thought many problems have arisen because of hospital chain companies and for-profits. In the “old days” (probably the 50′s and 60′s), he said, the hospital board, CEO, doctors and wealthy benefactors met socially at cocktail parties and fundraising functions. They were all local residents. There was solidarity (not his term) among them, i.e., they were bound by social niceties and the rules of high society. If something was wrong with the hospital, the people responsible were socially embarrassed in front of their peers, a powerful corrector. All this fell apart when hospitals got larger and sold out to healthcare chains, owned and operated by people a thousand miles away.
What he was talking about was not just subsidiarity and solidarity, but also distributism in the healthcare market. Small, locally owned, is better, and avoids all the perils of big business.
Another point: I work in healthcare finance, and my experience has been that as complicated and high tech as medicine has become, government involvement has made it even more complicated. The laws are not rational, but are instead cobbled together political compromises that defy understanding and are almost impossible to implement. Medicare rules amount to 100,000+ pages of this, for example. The administrative burdens on health facilities are so demanding that small companies cannot sustain the effort; the only way to survive has been to merge into larger chain organizations that have the resources to prepare the reports, run the compliance programs, meet the billing requirements, etc. So government rule making, IMHO, has helped drive healthcare to the sad state it is in.
You make a good point about the legal complications