Jeffries on SCHIP
posted by Frank Pasquale
My colleague Shavar Jeffries has been a powerful moral voice at BlackProf on a number of issues affecting children, including school vouchers. I found his take on the recent SCHIP debate extraordinarily compelling:
In the third presidential debate in 2004, the President reiterated that “[my] principles are derived from who I am. I believe we ought to love our neighbor like we love ourself . . . . And so my principles that I make decisions on are a part of me. And religion is a part of me.”
So I ask: Would Jesus have vetoed the SCHIP bill?
Of the over 43 million Americans lacking health insurance, about eight million are children. Not only does this mean that millions of children are unable to access the care they need to treat debilitating illnesses, it also means they cannot obtain the preventive care and counseling that protects against sickness and promotes wellness.
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The congressional bill would have added $7 billion to the program in each of the next five years, enabling S-CHIP to cover an additional 4 million children. This, evidently, was too much for the President to bear. He vetoed the bill, claiming that it would cover too many middle-class families, would encourage those with private coverage to switch to S-CHIP, and would represent an unjustifiable step toward government-managed health-care. These rationales, however, are unsupportable.
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So what would Jesus do? I think the answer is clear: “Whatever you neglected to do unto one of the least of these, you neglected to do unto Me.”
I admit that sometimes the application of religious principles to social problems can lead to a variety of solutions. And at least in Catholic social thought, the principle of subsidiarity may temper the desirability of any federalization of the system, as Susan Stabile notes in “Poor” Coverage: The Preferential Option for the Poor and Access to Health Care. Nevertheless, Stabile also notes that “We can not have adequate respect for the dignity of the human person without a system that ensures that all people have the ability to receive medical care when they need it.” SCHIP expansion would have been a step in that direction.
October 12, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Posted in: Health Law, Religion
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Responses (6)
KipEsquire - October 12, 2007 at 9:24 pm
“So I ask: Would Jesus have vetoed the SCHIP bill?”
Is he suggesting that Jesus was a tax collector? Because I can think of a Bible passage or two that would suggest otherwise.
There is no rational basis to invoke any government entitlement program, or any compulsory tax that finances one, as “proper Christian policy.”
“Doing good works” is not the moral equivalent of “forcing your neighbor to pay for them.” No true Christian has difficulty with this basic concept.
It is mind-boggling to me to think that there are self-professed “Christians” who consider it a “Christian” virtue to force other people to be “Christian.” It’s offensive when the conservative theocrats do it, and it’s no less offensive when liberal theocrats do it.
The conservative theocrats put “God” on the money in our wallets. The liberal theocrats now want to put “God” on the tax bill that pulls the money out of our wallets. While both insolently claim the moral high ground.
Bottom Line: There is no cognizable difference between Shavar Jeffries and James Dobson.
A pox on both their churches.
Adam - October 13, 2007 at 12:38 am
Jesus would want us to support children; therefore, Jesus would want the government to pay for it?
That’s curious logic. I suppose you’re conceding that Jesus would be anti-First-Amendment: After all, if Jesus wants us to worship God, then he also wants government to pay for it.
Frank - October 13, 2007 at 1:16 pm
For Kip: Is any taxation for any purpose legitimate to you? In response to your comment, I started rereading Chapter 8 of Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia last night (particularly 233-36 on health care), but found its content too laughable to continue for long.
For Adam: I don’t know of many anecdotes of lower middle class or poor people being denied attendance at the church of their choice . . . or being forced into bankruptcy to pay for church.
Finally, here’s Krugman commenting on a policy stance that would visit the mistakes of parents on their children:
“I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.”
To come back to Nozick: the fundamental flaw with high libertarian theory is that we’re never able to start from scratch, to set a fair initial distribution of entitlements which should then only be constrained by justice in transfers and justice in rectification. It is very difficult for me to understand why any child deserves to lack health care.
Adam - October 13, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Your response strikes me as a nonsequitur, but let me see if I follow your logic: Jesus would only oppose the First Amendment when it prevented government subsidization of financially troubled Christian churchs?
I’m no scholar of the Gospels, but I wonder if you’re missing the point. Jesus called on each of us to pay for those less fortunate, not to vote for government to confiscate others’ money to achieve that end.
(I suspect that in the Gospel According to Frank, the first beatitude would be, “Blessed are the bureaucrats, for they are the means-testers of God.” But that line is noticeably absent in matthew, mark, luke and john.)
Incidentally, if you really buy the rule that we should never allow children to suffer on account of their parents, then do you oppose partial birth abortion in all cases, including pregnancies caused by rape and incest? That strikes me as a pretty extreme position, but by your rule it is unavoidable.
Adam - October 13, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Incidentally, I must note that you how-would-Jesus-vote? routine is only marginal improvement upon you previous SCHIP-opposers-as-child-labor-supporters effort. How underwhelming, particularly given that we’re dealing with a legislative proposal of such import and complexity. The subject deserves light, not heat.
Frank - October 13, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Adam: as for “heat, not light,” why not try searching the blog for “SCHIP” and looking at my previous posts on the topic, dating back to the summer? I link to numerous reports from people like CBPP, Health Affairs, etc., and make an argument for the program. You can also click on the health law archives.
I can’t repeat everything I’ve said already in every blog post.
As for me favoring means-testing–actually, it’s the opponents of SCHIP who are really pushing us down that road. Check out this post:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/busybodies/
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