When saving money is the primary goal

The consequences will lead to justifying practies that are dehumanizing.

Wesley Smith comments on the Newsweek cover story “The Case for Killing Granny”.

Evan Thomas, one of the dying newsweekly’s most notable writers pushes the meme that the elderly should have their health care rationed….

“Politicians do not dare breathe the R word, lest they be accused—however wrongly—of trying to pull the plug on Grandma. But the need to spend less money on the elderly at the end of life is the elephant in the room in the health-reform debate. Everyone sees it but no one wants to talk about it.”

But, Wesley says…

But that is precisely what health care rationing to the elderly would be–pulling the plug on Grandma. And it wouldn’t stop there. People with disabilities may be far more costly to treat, since they live longer than the frail elderly. Once you decide that saving money is the primary goal, those who need help the most will be the ones denied it–ironically, in the cause of expanding access to care.

If some folks who have dug in to defend aggressive health care proposals that include abortion and rationing…..could settle down and have some conversation and do some planning with other folks who have been in the trenches for years working to improve health care for the vulnerable…….it’s possible to work this out.

Wesley has some points of agreement there.

And here’s an interesting analysis of the president’s health care plans, from the Acton Institute.

Rather than pushing for a “public” option that relies on government bureaucracy to underwrite a competitor for private insurance companies, the president’s plan ought to call for greater “non-profit” or “charitable” options that arise out of the spontaneous and voluntary character of civil society.

While there are established non-profit insurance entities, like many members of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, there are also newly burgeoning charitable and non-profit efforts that would be endangered if a new government-subsidized public option emerges. A recent WORLD Magazine report described the tenuous situation of health care sharing ministries (HCSMs), which could be excluded by the president’s plan. James Lansberry, president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, has said, “We are looking at complete obliteration of the ministries as they exist.”

Have we heard this anywhere else before now? Not a subject that gets worked into the heated debates, and certainly not one on the media radar. But there it is. 

HCSMs like Samaritan Ministries International, Christian Care Medi-Share, and Christian Health Care Ministries currently represent about 34,000 families nationwide. And while there is great potential for this number to rise dramatically in the future, the value represented of these kinds of embryonic efforts lies not just in the numbers but especially in the diversity of grassroots and community-based efforts to meet health care needs.

The president has said that there is a great deal of constructive discussion still necessary, and has proposed a period of four years before the marketplace exchange comes into existence, “which will give us time to do it right.”

Yes, health care reform will not go into effect until 2013 anyway, so why the urgency to rush through any plan that hasn’t been well scrutinized and publicly discussed?

There is good reason to hope that in the discussion over the next months and years a former community organizer will more clearly see that the health of our nation’s health care system depends on the vibrancy and diversity of charitable initiatives, voluntary organizations, and faith-based ministries. To do health care reform right, we need to deconstruct the spurious logic that juxtaposes corporate profits and governmental bureaucracy, and place mediating institutions where they belong: in the middle of the discussion.