CHA official offers Catholic take on U.S. health care reform principles

Social Justice News
March 20, 2008

CHA official offers Catholic take on U.S. health care reform principles
By Carol Zimmermann, Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Health care reform has to compete for attention from Congress along with the economic recession and the ongoing war in Iraq, said a Catholic Health Association official.

"It will be a battle" to keep health care needs for all Americans on the front burner, said Jeff Tieman, director of CHA's "Covering a Nation" initiative.

Tieman spoke March 13 to a group of editors of U.S. and Canadian Catholic publications at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops headquarters in Washington.

He said CHA's efforts to reform the health care system in the United States are defined in its newly released reform initiative, "Our Vision for U.S. Health Care." The document establishes principles for reform and proposes that a reformed system should:

-- Be "available and accessible to everyone" and pay "special attention to the poor and vulnerable."

-- Be oriented toward health and prevention "with the goal of enhancing the health status of communities."

-- Be "sufficiently and fairly financed."

-- Allocate resources in ways that are "transparent and consensus-driven."

-- Put patients at the center of care, addressing "health needs at all stages of life from conception to natural death."

-- Deliver care safely and effectively and with the "greatest possible quality."

"This is a vision of what health care can and should look like," Tieman said. The document took nearly one year to put together and includes input from medical personnel, ethicists and leaders in Catholic health care.

Tieman said the document includes elements from Catholic social teaching that "should be part of this debate." It emphasizes that all people have God-given dignity; the poor and vulnerable need special concern; health care is a basic human right along with food and shelter; and the health and well-being of each person is intertwined with the well-being of the broader community.

The document also notes health care services should stem from both the public and private sector and should "respect the religious and ethical values of patients and health care providers alike."

In January, the 15-page document on health care reform was sent to Catholic hospitals and bishops. Tieman said he hopes the document will be both a "centerpiece for dialogue" about pressing needs of health care and also a "road map for reform."

As he sees it, community members need to be talking about health care reform and he hopes that Catholic hospitals will host town hall meetings to encourage discussion about "what do we want and how do we get there" in terms of providing adequate health care for all.

Tieman, who takes a long view of health care, noted that even if presidential candidates make health care promises a key to making health care reform a reality is to always keep the issue in front of U.S. lawmakers.

"We need to keep it on the radar," he said, adding that Catholic health care ministry should "have a real voice before and after the election" in solving the urgent health care crisis.

Tieman cited statistics from "Our Vision for U.S. Health Care": 47 million people in the U.S. do not have basic health insurance coverage, more than 9 million children are uninsured, and each year 18,000 people in the U.S. die because they did not have health coverage and did not receive necessary medical treatment.

"The Catholic health care community would like to change that," Tieman said. "We can do better."

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