The USCCB was for it before they were against it.

Mark Brumbaugh, Saturday, April 03, 2010
Spring, Texas; mark.brumbaugh@sbcglobal.net

The USCCB was, for the longest time, strongly in support of the government reforming health care. They started off with the erroneous assumption that health care is a right. Then they found themselves backpedaling as the true result of a bad idea got clearer and clearer.

Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness are rights. Shelters, Food, Water, Transportation, Health Care are not rights; they are obligations of the individual to provide for themselves by self sufficiency or in our modern times, bartering goods produced by the person and family for goods not produced, but desired from others. In the event that an individual is truly unable to provide for themselves, God expects Charity from our heart to provide for those less able. This is natural and has worked for mankind since we were created.

Transferring charity to the government by way of confiscating a persons legitimate private property and giving to those who have less, is NOT charity. When the Bishops take the easy way out and tell us to vote for government programs that appear to be based on making things more fair, or equally distributed, they should not be surprised that they get a horrible, politically motivated and moral mess that is destructive and violates over half of the ten commandments.

I certainly hope this past event will illustrate to the USCCB the folly of taking a position on Social Issues that involves a government solution. Maybe the USCCB can get back to preaching personal charity to the point we have no tolerance or need for socialist redistribution of wealth.

If we all bought and carried catastrophic health insurance, and used tax deductible health savings accounts, we would know how much things cost and individually could prioritize our health expenses against everything else we need to prioritize ... food, education, bigger TV, new car, used car, bigger house, rent or buy ... etc.

When folks treat things like they are free or paid by somebody else, they treat them like their are limitless and bad things will happen. No way costs will go down when things are "free."

Covering everyone with prepaid health care, is going to be a disaster and I predict no good will come of it.

A response from a blog on which this was posted:

"I think the priest was trying to "throw your question over the partition" when he referred you to the USCCB, so I wouldn't condemn all bishops because of what one socialist priest says."

And I respond ...

You may have a point about the priest. However all of the USCCB letters to congress start out with the premise that health care is "a RIGHT", and that is absolutely impossible. Someone must "produce" health care. It is not free nor limitless. In the absence of effort on the part of a person separate from the self, it generally does not even exist. It is not air, nor water. It therefore cannot be "a RIGHT".

A RIGHT to life for example, means no one has the right to take your life away. It does NOT mean that you don't have to feed yourself, drink water, and breathe or that anyone else has to or even can do it for you. Ditto liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Carelessly throwing around words like "a right" by the USCCB, under the guise of moral imperative and Social Justice, is confusing to most conscientious, logical people and justifies stupid utopian bologna on the left, and I have a hard time tolerating it on behalf of the "United States Catholics", which the USCCB supposedly and in reality, represent.

What if everyone sat around and demanded their right to health care and coincidentally no one became a doctor, a nurse, a chemist, an X-ray tech, a researcher, built hospitals, invented drugs, drove ambulances, etc., etc., etc.?

Any performed service needs to receive something in value in relationship to the desire of the customer for that service. Otherwise each person would have to self provide everything they needed or wanted for themselves without dependence on any one else. Who could provide health care without compensation?

P.S. Now, I found myself in January, in a catholic church (to which I will never again attend) being asked in the Prayers of the Faithful for "Universal Health Care", and "Immigration Reform", and was told in the Homily, that if I had health insurance while others did not, I was stealing. When I asked for clarification from the pastor, I was directed to the USCCB and banned from further discussions with the pastor, with the admonition that "May God have mercy on your soul".

By the way, I sent a letter on this to Cardinal DiNardo after all of my attempts to discuss this issue with the priest were denied. The Cardinal's assistant intercepted the letter and asked the priest if it was worthy of the Cardinal's attention, and was told to throw it away. Have the Bishops learned nothing from the sex scandals?

Mark Brumbaugh

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USCCB Flip-Flop

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