With Liberty, Justice, and Health Care For All
Second, the family will suffer the loss of our income and support. The family will be financially diminished by the cost of the illness. Third, if we have health insurance, unnecessary illness drives up insurance costs; if we are uninsured, taxpayers will end up absorbing those medical expenses, which is unfair. Using emergency rooms to treat problems that could have been taken care of years earlier is driving up expenses.
We can see, then, how neglecting proper care of our health has all sorts of consequences that are costly in human and social terms. Inasmuch as we can avoid such harm, we have a moral obligation to do so. In speaking on the fifth commandment, the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that life and health are gifts from God and that “we must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good” (2288). Neglecting our health and doing what we know can cause harm is not reasonable. It cheats others’ needs for which we are responsible and harms the common good of society by driving up the cost of health care.
Regardless of what bearing next month’s election has on the issue of providing access to necessary health care for all, we must still act responsibly with respect to our own health.
Since 1891 popes have been developing Catholic social teaching. In his encyclical on the rights and responsibilities of workers and employers (Rerum Novarum), Pope Leo XIII states that an employee’s compensation for work should enable the worker to maintain a reasonable lifestyle. By the time of Pope John XXIII, developments in both Catholic social teaching and in the complexity of modern society indicated more rights and responsibilities:
“Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of ill health; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood” (Pacem in Terris, 11).