End the Shutdown, Protect Life, and Make Healthcare Affordable

At the heart of American civil society lies the moral obligation to protect human dignity and the right to life through law, public policy, the market economy, and our healthcare system. Congress should approve the Senate deal to end the shutdown, reject demands to expand the expensive Affordable Care Act (ACA), and pass real healthcare reforms to protect life and make healthcare truly affordable for the American people. Such a course of action is the best chance the nation has for protecting the dignity and wellbeing of all. The new Senate deal to end the government shutdown is an imperfect but good first step in this direction. 

Our nation has a moral duty to advance dignified healthcare access for all American citizens, especially the unborn, pregnant mothers, persons with disabilities, and the materially poor and underserved. But that’s not all. While recognizing the federal government’s right to secure our nation’s borders and uphold immigration laws, any human being within our borders, whether legally here or not, should be provided appropriate medical care because his citizenship status does not obfuscate his intrinsic human dignity and God-given right to life. And foundationally, government has a vital role in empowering the provision of healthcare for American citizens but not an exclusive role. When government policies promote an affordable, high-quality, and patient-controlled healthcare system, everyone wins—the underserved, the vulnerable, working families, the American people. When government promotes policies advancing control of the healthcare of millions of people, everyone loses. 

The battle between patient-centered healthcare versus government-centered healthcare is at the center of the debate over the current federal government shutdown. Under the Biden administration during the Covid-19 public health crisis and its aftermath, Congress expanded the tax credits for health insurance plans on the federal government’s ACA health exchanges as a temporary emergency measure during a time of national crisis. The Covid-19 crisis officially ended two years ago. However, some members of Congress resolved to shut down the federal government in a bid, in part, to force Congress to extend these temporary tax credits, enlarge the ACA, and accelerate a government-controlled, socialized healthcare system.

To be clear, instead of funding the government and social safety net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps, which serve millions of vulnerable families, certain members of Congress want to hijack the ACA to further their goal of socialized medicine. Instead of funding the government and identifying real healthcare reforms to make costs affordable for American families, supporters of the government shutdown want to spend an estimated $350 to $450 billion in taxpayer money to inflate a fundamentally flawed ACA. 

According to the Paragon Health Institute, the ACA tax credits that the government shutdown proponents want to extend do not go directly to the American people. As the Institute has stated, in truth, these tax credits first go directly to health insurance companies, and then can be separately reclaimed by taxpayers through their tax filings, thereby creating problems for waste and abuse. Over fifteen years since the ACA was enacted, a Government Accountability Office breakdown shows that healthcare costs have continued to rise. As the Institute’s commentary suggests, flooding the ACA with more federal tax dollars to pay for increasing healthcare costs likely will incentivize health insurance companies to further increase costs and make healthcare even more unaffordable for families nationwide.

Relentlessly expanding the ACA into a socialized program risks increasing healthcare costs long-term, and likely would eviscerate the dignity of the sick and the vulnerable. If Congress disregards the rising cost of the ACA and expands subsidies anyway, it will communicate to health insurers that taxpayers will endlessly pay for price increases. Health insurers will have little incentive to keep costs low. Many families, as patients and taxpayers, would almost certainly pay more. 

Furthermore, the evidence in North America and Western Europe demonstrates that socialized medicine undermines the sanctity of life and the health of the poor because it strongly prefers the wealthy and productive and disfavors the most vulnerable. Why do the “strong” win while those persons falsely perceived as “weak” lose in socialized healthcare systems? As we see in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, the answer to this question is this: Where government assumes total financial responsibility for its people’s healthcare, government budgetary pressures dominate all other considerations. The dignity of the patient is driven out of healthcare, patients become objectified, and the societal drive to deny care to the sick and suffering becomes overwhelming. Under socialized medicine, government budgetary pressures become so enormous, and care becomes so de-personalized, that government cannot resist the temptation to dehumanize (and abort or euthanize) the unborn, the elderly, persons with disabilities, and the materially poor. 

To protect the life and dignity of the vulnerable, Congress should learn from the tragic experiments in Canada and Western Europe and reject the drive for socialized medicine that underlies the effort to expand the ACA. 

Going forward, first, Congress should approve the new Senate deal to fund the government, end the shutdown, and protect the social safety net for millions. Thereafter, Congress should consider a legislative package to truly make healthcare affordable with a focus on (1) returning control of healthcare to American families, (2) reducing the underlying costs of health insurance, and (3) providing direct monetary support for vulnerable American families to freely choose, control, and directly pay for life-affirming healthcare. 

To make healthcare more affordable for consumers, this legislative package should open the healthcare market to new insurers, including insurers that respect the sanctity of life, because increased competition for consumers will drive down prices. Additionally, this legislative package should authorize the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to make regulatory reforms that incentivize faith-based organizations to participate in the healthcare market so that the needs of an even larger number of Americans may be served. Such a legislative package also should incentivize and empower the funding and expansion of faith-based and pro-life primary care, as well as mental healthcare, to reach the underserved in urban and rural America. Congress should choose the new legislative path of patient-centered care that drives down healthcare costs, increases affordability in the long term, and protects life and dignity. The path of government-centered care endlessly fails the poor, working-class, and vulnerable, and leads to a less healthy and vital citizenry, early death, and euthanasia. It’s time for a new way. It’s time to make healthcare affordable again.