Catholic Hospitals Expand Interference in US Health Care Delivery

[Copernicus]

The Roman Catholic Church has strong objections to certain legal medical procedures in the US and some states. For example, it tries to discourage abortions and contraception, but it also blocks participation in voluntary end-of-life decisions, which are legal in a few states. (Washington and Oregon are two states that have legalized a form of doctor-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients.)

See: As Catholic Hospitals Expand, So Do Limits on Some Procedures

According to the article, roughly one in six US hospital patients are under Catholic control, but many patients are unaware of the religious restrictions on their health care decisions. Not only do Catholic hospitals usually make it difficult to find out which health care procedures they do not allow, but, in some cases, they have downplayed their identity or affiliation with the Catholic Church. Some hospitals have "secularized" their names. Some have removed religious symbols in hospitals. The motive for this appears to be an effort to be more "marketable" to non-Catholic patients, not necessarily to sandbag women seeking abortions or tubal ligations. Nevertheless, there have been cases of patients who want those procedures to discover the restrictions after they have become patients of the hospital. Hospitals that worry about exposing their religious affiliation clearly aren't going to want to make it easy for patients to discover what procedures they ban on religious grounds.

My state of Washington requires hospitals with religious restrictions to post those restrictions in an accessible fashion on websites. Unfortunately, many of those hospitals still bury the information, making it almost impossible for people who do not specifically hunt for them to find the list of procedures. For example, a couple of years ago I ended up in the emergency room of our local Swedish Hospital with a case of pneumonia. I chose to go there, not knowing that the Catholic Church had a dominant position in setting hospital policies there. Had I needed them, I would not have gotten help with end-of-life services. I only learned of this weeks after release, because I read an article on this subject in a local news source.

What should government policy be with respect to this under-the-radar campaign by the Catholic Church to spread its influence over health care delivery? My own opinion is that any hospital that takes taxpayer dollars--e.g. Medicare--should be required to support all legal medical procedures regardless of religious objection to those policies.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Oh, I think something similar to the stupid stickers they put on CDs needs to be up front at entrances, web sites, printed materials.

"This hospital has reserved the right to refuse to provide medical services and procedure for religious purposes."

 

[Lion IRC]

Government policy should be the same as in any case where the private (religious) sector picks up some or all of the burden which taxpayers would otherwise have to bear. They should adhere to economic rationalism.

You wanna tax the churches? You wanna tell them how to run their schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, soup kitchens? Fine. But don't be surprised by the law of unintended consequences.

Quite some time ago in .au there was policy initiative to withdraw government funding for catholic schools - in the persuit of secularist ideology. Catholic parents en masse withdrew their kids from those catholic schools and waited for the secular policy boffins to work out where all those displaced kids would go for their 'free' government funded education.

What do you do with a Catholic Church which simultaneously opposes same-sex marriage yet is the worlds largest charitable service provider to the victims of HIV AIDS?

What do you do with a Catholic Church which simultaneously opposes abortion yet funds thousands of orphanages and refuges for single mothers?

 

[Harry Bosch]

Government policy should be the same as in any case where the private (religious) sector picks up some or all of the burden which taxpayers would otherwise have to bear. They should adhere to economic rationalism.

You wanna tax the churches? You wanna tell them how to run their schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, soup kitchens? Fine. But don't be surprised by the law of unintended consequences.

Quite some time ago in .au there was policy initiative to withdraw government funding for catholic schools - in the persuit of secularist ideology. Catholic parents en masse withdrew their kids from those catholic schools and waited for the secular policy boffins to work out where all those displaced kids would go for their 'free' government funded education.

What do you do with a Catholic Church which simultaneously opposes same-sex marriage yet is the worlds largest charitable service provider to the victims of HIV AIDS?

What do you do with a Catholic Church which simultaneously opposes abortion yet funds thousands of orphanages and refuges for single mothers?

Okay. But just don't allow the priests around your kids unattended.

 

[Rhea]

Government policy should be the same as in any case where the private (religious) sector picks up some or all of the burden which taxpayers would otherwise have to bear. They should adhere to economic rationalism.

You wanna tax the churches? You wanna tell them how to run their schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, soup kitchens? Fine. But don't be surprised by the law of unintended consequences.

Quite some time ago in .au there was policy initiative to withdraw government funding for catholic schools - in the persuit of secularist ideology. Catholic parents en masse withdrew their kids from those catholic schools and waited for the secular policy boffins to work out where all those displaced kids would go for their 'free' government funded education.

What do you do with a Catholic Church which simultaneously opposes same-sex marriage yet is the worlds largest charitable service provider to the victims of HIV AIDS?

What do you do with a Catholic Church which simultaneously opposes abortion yet funds thousands of orphanages and refuges for single mothers?

The same thing you do with tire companies who simultaneously throw nails on the road and sell tires.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Government policy should be the same as in any case where the private (religious) sector picks up some or all of the burden which taxpayers would otherwise have to bear. They should adhere to economic rationalism.

And then turns around and uses an examples where taxpayers are supporting the school...

Not thinking things thru too clearly, again.

What do you do with a Catholic Church which

Are they receiving federal funds? Then they need to obey federal laws. Fairly straightforward, really.

 

[Lion IRC]

What are you talking about? Taxpayers are nett beneficiaries of catholic funded schools/hospitals.
Those institutions aren't a drain on the state.

And ALL institutions are subject to the law - not just fully funded secular ones. If the government wants to try and force catholic hospitals into choosing between providing abortions or violating their religious conviction, it won't take guesswork to determine the unintended consequences.

 

[Copernicus]

Government policy should be the same as in any case where the private (religious) sector picks up some or all of the burden which taxpayers would otherwise have to bear. They should adhere to economic rationalism.

So you don't think that a hospital run by Jehovah's Witnesses should be held liable for refusing to give blood transfusions to patients? Your argument gets to be a little absurd. Hospitals, especially those that benefit from government subsidies (e.g. Medicare and Medicaid), should be required to provide all patients with legally permitted procedures that meet normal medical standards.

You wanna tax the churches? You wanna tell them how to run their schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, soup kitchens? Fine. But don't be surprised by the law of unintended consequences.

This is a bit off topic, but I do want to tax churches for the public services that they rely on, same as other businesses and private clubs. After all, they still have to follow health codes and sanitation standards in those schools, hospitals, shelters, and soup kitchens. They should also chip in for to pay the salaries of inspectors, police, and firefighters. It is utterly unconscionable that the public should carry their burden, especially those of us who believe that the government has no right to subsidize religious institutions. Everyone else has to pay higher taxes in order to provide these subsidies to religious institutions, which compete the institutions that do not receive equal benefits.

Quite some time ago in .au there was policy initiative to withdraw government funding for catholic schools - in the persuit of secularist ideology. Catholic parents en masse withdrew their kids from those catholic schools and waited for the secular policy boffins to work out where all those displaced kids would go for their 'free' government funded education.

American Catholic schools still seem to be able to make a go of it even without that public funding. Of course, they are given subsidies in other ways, but there is also the problem that parents who send their children to schools that are not tax-supported tend not to want to pay taxes for public schools. So I would rather that the taxpayers assumed the full burden of public education at taxpayer expense. Let children get the religious "education" in Sunday school. That's where I got mine. There is no reason for the government to facilitate religion or religious education.

What do you do with a Catholic Church which simultaneously opposes same-sex marriage yet is the worlds largest charitable service provider to the victims of HIV AIDS?

What do you do with a Catholic Church which simultaneously opposes abortion yet funds thousands of orphanages and refuges for single mothers?

You give them tax-exempt status for those charitable services and forbid them to proselytize beneficiaries of those services. That's what we did in the past, before all of the "faith-based" nonsense was foisted on us by believers.

What are you talking about? Taxpayers are nett beneficiaries of catholic funded schools/hospitals.
Those institutions aren't a drain on the state.

And ALL institutions are subject to the law - not just fully funded secular ones. If the government wants to try and force catholic hospitals into choosing between providing abortions or violating their religious conviction, it won't take guesswork to determine the unintended consequences.

Well, it turns out that the "unintended consequence" of letting Catholic-controlled hospitals get away with denying these perfectly legal services is that people who need them often find out too late that they can't get them. Catholic hospitals should be required to meet all normal medical standards, especially in areas where no alternatives exist because it is not cost-effective to build extra hospitals in the area to compete with tax-subsidized religious hospitals that deny the services and are not even up front about it to prospective patients.