What We Face as a Nation

The last major proposal to provide comprehensive health care to all Americans was sent to the U.S. Congress by President Clinton in 1994. It failed and since that time the nation's problems have deepened: Americans pay for the most expensive health care system in the world, yet more than 44 million people have no insurance and limited access to primary or non-emergency care.

And the result has been, as many health care analysts have pointed out, that "life turns out differently when you're uninsured."2 Further, many of those who are insured are growing increasingly threatened about their continued coverage and its affordability.

In the recent past, the nation's leadership has not framed health care as a right and a necessity and not just another commodity. They have been unwilling to summon the political will, moral courage and willingness to sacrifice for the common good that universal health care requires.

What Catholic Teaching Tells Us

• The story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) tells of a man "left half dead" on the road to Jericho. While the Levite and the priest pass on the other side of the road, the Samaritan stops and takes care of him. To the lawyer who was trying to trap Jesus in a philosophical discussion, Jesus asks a simple question: "Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell in the brigands' hands?" How do we act as a "neighbor" to the 44 million people who are excluded from the US health care system?


• In the November 2003 letter Faithful Citizenship - A Call to Political Responsibility, the US Bishops remind us that "Affordable and accessible health care is an essential safeguard of human life, a fundamental human right, and an urgent national priority. We need to reform the nation's health care system, and this reform must be rooted in values that respect human dignity, protect human life, and meet the needs of the poor and uninsured."3

Where We Are in September 2004

Access to Health Care

• 43.6 million Americans in 2002 had no health care coverage, 15.2 percent of the population—up from 14.2 percent in 2000.4


• People who have coverage can’t necessarily count on keeping it: 81.8 million had no health coverage at some point in the 2002-2003 period, including 2.5 million in Michigan (28.7% of the state’s 8.8 million residents under 65).5


• Eight out of 10 of the uninsured are in working families and come from every community, every walk of life, every race and ethnic group, every income level.


• About 18,000 Americans die each year of treatable diseases because they don’t have health coverage—a number similar to having a 9/11 disaster every other months.

Cost of Health Care

• In the first quarter of 2004, the cost of health care increased at an annual rate of 8.2 percent, four times the annual rate of inflation. It represents 15% of the gross domestic product (GDP), much more than any other industrialized nation such as Switzerland (10.9%); Germany (10.7%) and France (9.5%).


• Health care benefits provided by employers are decreasing and co-pays by employees are increasing, and there is a steady decline in the number of large companies offering retiree coverage (46% in 1993 vs. 28% in 2003).


• The Medicare prescription drug benefit scheduled to start in January 2006 is projected to cost $550 billion over the next ten years, in funds borrowed from future generations.


• The law contains no cost controls and the federal government is prohibited from negotiating lower prices with drug companies for its 41 million beneficiaries as happens in the Veterans Benefits program and federal workers benefits.


• Medicare participants are prohibited from buying drugs in Canada and cannot buy gap insurance to cover drug costs during the large coverage gap ($1,500 - $3,100 annually).

Health Care Quality

• A comparative study of health outcomes around the world resulted in the author’s observation that “We love to think we have the best health care in the world, but we don’t have any evidence of that.”6


• Roughly 80,000 preventable deaths in US hospitals occur every year due to medical errors.7

In agreement with the U.S. Bishops, Catholics are urged to vote for candidates “based on the full range of issues, as well as on the candidate’s personal integrity, philosophy and performance,” keeping in mind that “a Catholic moral philosophy does not easily fit the ideologies of ‘right’ or ‘left’, nor the platform of any party…Our responsibility is to measure all candidates, policies, parties, and platforms by how they protect the life, dignity and rights of the human person, whether they protect the poor and the vulnerable and advance the common good."8

1. Statements from the publication “Faithful Citizenship: a Catholic Call to Political Responsibility,” US Conference of Catholic Bishops; concepts adapted from “Peaceweavings: Choosing a Presidential Candidate, Pax Christi, USA and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference
2. Cover the Uninsured Week materials, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, May 2004
3. “Faithful Citizenship: a Catholic Call to Political Responsibility,” US Conference of Catholic Bishops, November 2003
4. U.S. Census Bureau
5. One in Three: Non-Elderly Americans without Health Insurance Families USA
6. Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Wall Street Journal, April 2004
7. Institute of Medicine Report on patient safety
8. Faithful Citizenship: a Catholic Call to Political Responsibility, US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Nov. 2003

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