On poisoned water and the principle of subsidiarity

LifeSiteNews.com interviews Bishop Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Baker, Oregon, about President Obama's health care legislation:

Vasa noted that he believes "the notion of providing more comprehensive health insurance coverage is a just and right thing to do."  However, he said: "that does not mean that THIS health insurance plan, only because it promises comprehensive health insurance coverage, must be supported. 

"In effect, should we support giving poisoned water to the thirsty?  I think not."

Bishop Vasa's sentiments reflect the words of two other prelates who have spoken on the issue: Cardinal Justin Rigali, head of the U.S. Bishops' pro-life office, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver.  All three have urged opposition to the bills in their current form, insisting that the bills' abortion expansion flies in the face of the Church's advocacy for more available health care.

"The Church is very clear in supporting health care, but these are absolute requirements," Rigali told LSN in a telephone interview last week.  "So our message is very clear: support genuine health care reform that respects the life and dignity of all. That has to be made clear ... for it to be acceptable to us."

Chaput criticized the supposed "common ground" abortion language in the House bill as a "shell game," and urged citizens to demand that abortion be taken out of the bill.

Read more of Archbishop Chaput's comments here. Cardinal Rigali's statement about health care reform and abortion provisions can be read here.

To continue with Bishop Vasa's imagery, it's not just that the water is poisoned—every indication is that it is also wildly overpriced, it will be rationed, it won't be delivered on time, and it will be forced down your throat regardless of whether you want it or not. In addition, it is an unproven product that is being badly marketed, to the point that many Americans, including myself, strongly suspect we are being sold a pool of rotten swamp water, not crystal clear stream water from the Rocky Mountains.

One problem with President Obama's health care plan that doesn't seem to be getting much attention among Catholics, is how it squares with the principle of subsidiarity, a key principle of Catholic social doctrine that I bring up from time to time. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says this of subsidiarity:

The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to certain forms of centralization, bureaucratization, and welfare assistance and to the unjustified and excessive presence of the State in public mechanisms. “By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending”. An absent or insufficient recognition of private initiative — in economic matters also — and the failure to recognize its public function, contribute to the undermining of the principle of subsidiarity, as monopolies do as well. (par 187)

The principle of subsidiarity was strongly invoked by Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete in a short August 5th essay, "The health care reform and the lack of the value of subsidiarity in Obama's background," for an Italian newspaper:

I think the problem is that the American people almost instinctively feel a threat to one of the most important, defining values of American nationhood, namely the value of subsidiarity. I think it is the President whose background lack of experience of the value of subsidiarity makes it difficult to him to understand the dangers almost instinctively experienced by the majority of the people.

The fact is that the American people pay more to get less health care security than any other industrialized nation in the world. I think most Americans understand this. Most Americans understand that there is need for reform of their present system. The question the ask is: at what cost?

There is definitely something to what Monsignor Albacete says about Americans having a certain instinctive sense about the principle of subsidiarity, even if most of them have never heard of it. But his remark about American having less health care security than other industrialized countries is problematic in itself. How many Americans are actually turned away from treatment at hospitals or clinics? How many Americans have to wait months or even years to have major surgery? (Ironically, just as the debate over nationalized health care is heating up in the U.S., the country to the north is admitting that its "is imploding" and that "there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system".) In reality, most Americans are happy with their health care, and American health care (when life expectancy is adjusted for deaths by homicide and accidents), is the best in the world. This is not to ignore or understate the real problems that exist, but to emphasize that real problems are the same thing as national emergencies.

So, the question indeed is: at what cost? Those who believe that the State is God, or at least a substitute for God, hold as dogma the need to control, direct, and coerce people from the womb to the tomb. Some significant steps to this end have already taken place over the past few decades, most notably with the canonization of compulsory public education, which most people view as being as American as apple pie, even though it is far more Prussian than American, as well as being far more controlling and invasive than Horace Mann, John Dewey, and Co. could have ever dreamed of it being. The bottom line with (greatly expanded) government control of health care is that it equates to control of so much more than just when you should visit a doctor or swallow a pill, as Jonah Goldberg rightly notes:

When it comes to civil liberties, liberals are often distrustful of government power. But, for reasons that baffle me, they are quite comfortable with Uncle Sam getting into the business of deciding, or providing “guidance” on, which lives are more valuable than others. A government charged with extending life expectancy must meddle not just with our health care, but with what we eat, how we drive, how we live. A government determined to cut costs must meddle not just with how we live, but how we die.

Whenever the federal government has taken on tasks that should, I think, be limited to families, communities, churches, and other local or state institutions, it has usually done a mediocre to very poor job and has come in
wildly over budget. Public education is one example; another is the so-called "War on Poverty," a product of the so-called "Great Society," which has led to increased poverty, more crime, and more births out of wedlock, all for billions of dollars (not "great" and certainly not good for society). There is also the fragile and largely broke Social Security system. Each of these failures were created by or supported by men—Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ—who believed the State is a sacred entity who rightly demands our full and final allegiance. That belief flies in the face of both common sense and Catholic doctrine, as Pope Benedict XVI explained so well in Deus Caritas Est:

The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human. (par 28)

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links, Articles, and Excerpts:

• What Is Catholic Social Teaching? A Review Essay on An Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching | Mark Brumley
• "Can Catholics Be 'Real Americans'?" | Mark Brumley
• On Being Catholic American | Joseph A. Varacalli
• The State Which Would Provide Everything | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Secularity: On Benedict XVI and the Role of Religion in Society | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Speaking Up For Life | An Interview with Deirdre McQuade, the USCCB's Director of Planning and Information
• On Being Neither Liberal nor Conservative | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• The Role of the Laity: An Examination of Vatican II and Christifideles Laici | Carl E. Olson

Comments

[TDJ]

I've been blogging on the issue of subsidiarity since August 10 (Vivificat's HCR tag). The problem seems to be that not many understand this principles and those who do, think it is OK to ditch it in order to achieve universal health insurance coverage.

-Theo

[Shaun G]

I may be wrong, but I have always thought of subsidiarity as more of an organizational principle, rather than a principle that suggests which functions and services ought to be publicly run versus privately run.

I know that, in terms of organization, the principle of subsidiarity says that if a local entity (e.g. a city government) can perform a certain function just as well as a higher-level entity (e.g. the federal government), then it should be the local entity that performs that function.

But that does not necessarily mean that any given function is more appropriate to be run publicly versus privately, does it? I mean, I'm sure that privately run libraries could be run just as well as public libraries, but we as a society have chosen to make them public, so that everyone can benefit from them.

One might argue, then, that the idea of subsidiarity does not necessarily conflict with the idea of taxpayer-funded health insurance. It merely brings into question whether such a program need be administered by the federal government, rather than, say, a state government.

An analogy: Since local fire departments can perform their necessary functions at least as well as, say, a federal fire department, subsidiarity prefers local fire departments.

But those local fire departments are still taxpayer-funded, and that doesn't seem to conflict with the idea of subsidiarity.

And indeed, they are taxpayer-funded for very much the same reason that proponents of universal health coverage say health care should be taxpayer-funded:

When someone's house is on fire, common sense (among other things) demands that firefighters put out the fire -- even if the homeowner was supposed to (or required to) pay an annual fee for firefighting service yet failed to do so.

Similarly, we know that there are always going to be people without health insurance, even if it becomes a legal requirement to maintain a policy. Yet common sense (among other things) demands that health care providers still give these people treatment, even if they can't pay for it.

[TDJ]

Yes, FDs, PDs are tax-payer funded, but they are also accountable directly to the communities they protect. If the subsidiarity is to hold, health care insurance management should occur at the level of social organization closest to the consumer. That would not be the Federal level, but at a community level still to be defined.

[Jean]

Subsidiarity in education puts the family in charge of education decisions. Subsidiarity in health care brings decision-making control down to the patient level. The dilemma is how to get the public to fund it without allowing politicians to control it. Subsidiarity is not coercive. It inspires community-based relationships and true compassion ("suffering with") instead of using force to steal from Peter to pay Paul to make John feel magnanimous. Of course, this is a moot point since we're out of money. They'll be running the printing presses to fund "reform", curshing the poor and the middle class through inflation.

[Cecilia]

Good remarks by Bishop Walker Nickless of Sioux City, IA, are at the diocesan web page: http://www.scdiocese.org/

[Lumigan]

Yes, FDs, PDs are tax-payer funded, but they are also accountable directly to the communities they protect. If the subsidiarity is to hold, health care insurance management should occur at the level of social organization closest to the consumer.