Nat'l Catholic Reporter: Health Care is NOT A Choice -- it's an obligation.

[pnwmom]

https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/editorial-health-care-not-choice

The Donald Trump administration and Republican leadership of the House of Representatives are trying to rush through Congress their long-promised replacement legislation for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, President Barack Obama’s signature legislation. They are rushing it in the hopes that people won’t look at it too closely, because the closer people look the more they realize that the American Health Care Act isn’t just bad legislation, it is unjust. If passed in its current form, it will cause irreparable harm to our nation’s common good. It will hurt us all.

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The last lie they tell, and it is perhaps the most insidious, is that they are giving people more choice. Again, the budget office and independent analysis show that eliminating people from programs and pricing them out of the market does not increase choice. The pretense of choice is maintained, gloried in fact, which is why talk of choice is so insidious: It creates a false notion of how the common good can best be served.

Saying that health coverage is a consumer choice makes health care a commodity, something that can be traded, bartered or sold on the open market. Catholic social teaching is clear that health care is not a commodity; it is not a bundle of services available to the highest bidder. Health care is a fundamental human right — Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI used those very words — alongside water, food and education. Providing health care is among those rights that the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says “every nation is required in duty to make towards a true worldwide cooperation for the common good of the whole of humanity and for future generations.”

Providing health care to our citizens isn’t a matter of choice, it is a duty, an obligation. Allowing this notion of “choice” to dominate conversations around health care is not in our best national interests. Let’s not forget that the American Health Care Act is just the first part of a multipart Republican agenda. Current legislation is being advanced under rules governing budget reconciliation bills, so two aspects of the GOP agenda will be taken up later: eliminating mandates in the Affordable Care Act and cutting regulations.

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[Eliot Rosewater]

1. They dont care, they will pass it and high five each other when people start dying.

[Kimchijeon]

2. I agree with that sentiment

It is a duty, an obligation. We are weaker as a society when we deny our citizens basic human dignities, like healthcare.