Politics
Monday September 21, 2009
Abp. Burke Criticizes Baucus Health Care Bill
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By Kathleen Gilbert
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an appearance on FOX News on Sunday, the Vatican's Archbishop Raymond Burke reinforced warnings from the pro-life community over Democratic Sen. Max Baucus' proposed health care legislation. Pro-life leaders say that the bill poses too much of a threat to the unborn, elderly, disabled, and chronically ill.
The Senate Finance Committee is expected to meet this week to vote on the plan, the latest version of the Democrats' health care overhaul to be introduced to the Senate.
"The Church certainly wants to support the provision of health care for those who are in most need, [but] we can never accept the mandate of abortion and this is abortion, provision of abortion, and this is in the Baucus bill. So it's certainly not acceptable," said Archbishop Burke, the head of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's highest court.
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) also strongly opposed the bill for its handling of abortion, saying the legislation constitutes "a drastic break from longstanding federal policy" by sending federal subsidies to private insurance plans and government-chartered cooperatives that pay for elective abortion.
Although President Obama has insisted on several occasions that his health care overhaul would not send taxpayer dollars to abortion, the White House has continued refusing to endorse language that would explicitly exclude abortion from the bills. Meanwhile, the administration has expressed openness toward the interests of abortion groups, who have called on the president to expand abortion through the health care plan.
Burke also appeared to agree with the NRLC's assessment that the bill provides Medicare doctors with an incentive to deny treatment to seniors. The group says that under the bill, doctors authorizing treatments who land in the top 10% of per capita cost for a year will lose 5% of their total Medicare reimbursements for that year. Yet no matter how cost-efficient Medicare doctors try to be, says the NRLC, there will always be a top 10% - establishing an unlimited downward spiral of treatment.
Archbishop Burke said he "would be opposed to any kind of health care which would withdraw medical care, for instance from the elderly, from those who are gravely ill, or from those who have special needs."
"Often times it's true that these brothers and sisters require a great deal of health care that can be costly," he said, "but they have the first title to our care, and it is simply not acceptable to withdraw health care from those who are in most need."
Burke said he feared that the provision "could be a kind of subtle introduction into health care of euthanasia."
"In other words, making a judgment with regard to certain citizens in the matter of their productivity to society: understood in a very utilitarian, a very materialistic sense," he said. "And therefore the withdrawal of health care from these citizens, which of course is a violation of the dignity of human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death."
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
"Death Spiral" Rationing in Baucus Bill Gravely Endangers America's Seniors: NRLC
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09091806.html
White House Still Refusing to Endorse Abortion-Excluding Language in Health Care Bill
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09091805.html
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