What’s Wrong with the World

The men signed of the cross of Christ go gaily in the dark.

About

What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Business is Business...

...and charity is charity. They are different things. Is there anything morally problematic about that?

Health insurance is a business. People go into the health insurance business for the same reason that people go into any other business: to make money by providing something that other people want and for which they are willing to pay enough for you to make a profit.

So far so good? Is there anything morally problematic about going into the health insurance business for the sole purpose of making a profit? Is it, for example, any more morally problematic than going into, say, the plumbing business for the sole purpose of making a profit? Or is there something about the health insurance business that makes the profit motive there particularly immoral?

I don't see why, but I'm open to objections.

Anyway, continuing: suppose that, having gone into the health insurance business, to make a living, my worst nightmare shows up, one day, in my office: some guy - lets call him Marty - together with his sisters and his cousins and his aunts, who, between them, suffer from more (and more expensive) pre-existing medical conditions than the average county in Wyoming: herniated discs, debilitating headaches, nausea, intermittent "visual phenomena" - you name it, they've got it. And what they haven't already got, they're going to get, sooner or later - given a family history of predisposition to certain catastrophic illnesses, beginning with colon cancer and moving on from there.

Question: am I morally obligated to offer the usual policies at the usual prices to Marty and family, just as if they were average customers? Am I morallly obligated to swallow the inevitable loss?

And is it morally acceptable for Marty and family - none of whom I know from Adam - to demand this of me? Just because I'm in the health insurance business?

Suppose that I don't think so. Suppose that I answer their demands like this:

"Marty, you and and your family are not looking for insurance. You are looking for charity. And you have come to the wrong place. This is a business. This is not a charity. I am in business to make a living. I am not in business to aid the needy. And your need is no claim on me - a stranger to you. If your need is a claim on anyone, it is not on strangers, but on your family, your friends, your neighbours and your community. You should go to them for help. You should not come to me. I have my own family, and friends, and neighbours, and community. And they and theirs - not you and yours - are the legitimate claimants on my charity."

Would this just be a monstrously evil thing for me to say and to believe?

Comments (55)

I think a huge factor in the rejection of your thesis, Steve, has been the increasing equation between "insurance provider" and "healthcare provider." When I was a kid, we had medical insurance, but we paid for most of our routine medical treatment ourselves. I assume this meant that we had high deductibles. That was how it worked back then. The insurance company really was an insurance company. It insured against something that wasn't automatically going to happen to everyone! It insured against a higher-than-x loss. And no insurance bureaucrat attempted to keep down costs in an artifical way by telling you which doctor you could go to or which prescription drugs were on a "formulary." There was none of that micro-managing. The advent of HMO's caused a _huge_ shift in the entire mindset. Now, in exchange for less freedom to choose your doctor or hospital, you could get far more sweeping coverage. Many co-pays, especially for a doctor's visit, were risibly small--scarcely visible to the naked eye. An "insurance company" was now a sugar daddy, a provider of Everything You Need. It would be the equivalent of having auto insurance to pay for your leaky radiator or your quarterly oil changes.

Most of us, myself included, fretted about the loss of independence but in the end accepted the wider coverage of virtually all our healthcare by a third party. Traditional insurance plans gradually became unavailable even in gilt-edged jobs like education. And the public's mindset changed until now what is manifestly a _medical welfare_ program in Massachusetts (about which I had a couple of posts because of the abortion issue and Catholic hospitals, etc.), is called...offering medical insurance to the poor. Even terminologically, that would have been pretty much inconceivable thirty years ago when I was a child and people actually paid their doctors themselves for most small things. Welfare was welfare, and insurance was insurance. The HMO revolution has gradually changed hearts and minds and blurred the distinction between offering healthcare and offering insurance against unexpected loss, leading to the present situation in both terminology and in people's moral reaction to what you say in the main post.

My two cents.

Your response is perfectly apt and an excellent point in the debate about whether we ought to allow people to sell insurance.

The problem most plain to me in this post is the reason behind the business of insurance, which is not to squeeze out every last penny in profit margin, is in fact to create a large enough pool of risk so that people like Marty can be included with everyone else. So Marty's case becomes part of the normal expense of doing business and is not some special case of charity. Another problem is that you lose any intelligible reason to complain about faceless government bureaucrats rationing health care when you also believe in the sacred right of faceless insurance company bean counters to deny coverage.

Business is business...and charity is charity. They are different things. Is there anything morally problematic about that?

Is there anything morally problematic about going into the health insurance business for the sole purpose of making a profit? Is it, for example, any more morally problematic than going into, say, the plumbing business for the sole purpose of making a profit?

Steve, I think that the point of Caritas et Veritatis is to say that YES, there is a problem with going into the plumbing business for the sole purpose of making a profit. It can indeed be the primary reason you choose plumbing over, say, mowing lawns. But if your sole purpose is profit, then you don't look at your customers as persons, and instead as profit units. Big problem there. I think what you mean to say is that if you didn't need your business to turn a profit to support you and your family, you would just as soon not bother with the business at all, and thus profit is integral to your purpose. But integral to your purpose includes doing those things which make it concomitantly possible to take care of your family (so working 20 hours days, which will increase your profit, is out). Likewise, doing things which treat your customers as persons as well as sources of profit is supposed to be integral to your whole purpose as well.

Or is there something about the health insurance business that makes the profit motive there particularly immoral?

My vote is no. Wouldn't you have to say that the business itself is immoral in order for making a profit to be immoral? So far, even the most extreme liberal (non-totalitarian) sorts I have seen don't think that offering health insurance is itself immoral.

What is true, though (and this goes with a myriad businesses that touch more directly on survival) the business end of it must be kept strictly under the control of the higher view, which is to treat the individual as a person. This goes for being a doctor, and being a fireman, and a policeman, and a pharmacist, and running a hospital, and even such things as being an electrician (who, unless he is careful, will kill people). Nobody thinks that a doctor should not earn a profit off of his general clientele - that's what supports him and his family.

Maybe it makes more sense to complain about an undue profit in certain businesses like insurance and medicine. This is probably easier to argue, but then CV makes points about undue profits in all business, so it is not clear how insurance is different.

I agree that for the insurance seller, just like for the doctor, the moral crunch comes in when the potential client comes in needing services but is unable to afford the true cost of them. For the insurance company, just as for the doctor, or the hospital, to turn away the client simply and solely upon determining that they will not pay the fair cost of the service, without seeking further as to why they will not pay, is not treating him like a person. Once you establish that the reason is that they simply cannot pay enough, then you have been put in the place of having the potential for performing a charitable work. The mere fact that they are before you as clients means they are your neighbor in the sense of Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan. Remember, the good sam did not know the robbery victim in the least either.

The solution may be anything from offering to cover the service without adequate pay, to putting them in touch with Catholic Charity, to putting up a sign in your office detailing their need and asking for donations, to a thousand other things. Depending on ingenuity and all of your other commitments. It is irrational to put down a blanket supposition that you, the insurance provider, (or doctor) MUST, without fail, go ahead and provide the service yourself without adequate fee, and eat the loss.

One thing that St. Thomas says about (that applies to social charity) is that your nearer neighbors do have a greater claim on you than those more remote. Your closest neighbors of all are your nuclear family, then extending out to your relatives, those who live in your neighborhood, those with whom you work, and (with obviously reducing levels of integration) even the people you share the freeway with. So a proper moral decision to give aid to the neighbor who comes to you needing insurance needs to take a balance with the claims of your other neighbors, including those who are closer and have higher claims.

One thing that I have seen and think is ripe for potential abuse: a family with very considerable health care needs moved from one community (where they had used up a fair amount of the support resources available) to another community with the apparent motive of tapping a new community with greater remaining resources. Creating "close" neighbors so that you have a call on their charity does seem a bit far.

Some people want to say that the only truly moral solution is to nationalize health insurance, so that Mary does not have to ask for this charity, and so that we know for sure it will be covered and there will be nobody who falls through the cracks. But this assumes many things which are not evident, like this: the 'discomfort' Mary suffers in having to ask for charity is an undue burden. I can't recall seeing one single passage in the Gospels that supports such a notion.

This is a sore subject, for me. You don't get to choose the genetics or the conditions you are born with. Some people are given a much heavier health-cross to bear than others. I cannot get health care. I have two pre-existing conditions that are automatic denials of coverage. I didn't ask for the conditions. I have been relatively symptom free for over thirty years (that should mean something), but except for individual policies with extremely high premiums (over half my monthly salary) for insurance for illness I haven't sought medical care for in thirty years, ordinary health coverage is impossible.

Is it actually charity I need? Really? If I had been covered, regularly, I would have paid the regular premiums for many years without ever taking advantage of a doctor. Almost everyone is going to need catastrophic care once in life. If that is all I need, then, in fact, my case would follow nothing other than the normal course of most people.

Because a health company made an arbitrary ruling on a situation based on a condition - a name only, not a diagnosis of the state of the individual, I am denied coverage. In fact, I suspect I am healthier, all things considered, than half of the people reading this post and yet, I can't get insurance except of a very burdensome type, even though my conditions have not imposed a burden, themselves.

Yes, that is evil and not charitable, at all. I have no family to pick up the tab, Steve, if that is what you are suggesting and why should they pick up the tab for any medical condition that might occur in the future that anyone could get, such as a sinus infection? That would be a burden to my family and children (if I had any).

Your scenario is a roll-of-the-dice type of scenario that denies many people the right to care which would be ordinary, except as determined by the all-seeing predictions of the medical actuaries,

What you are doing in my case, is denying me reasonable care, which is all I ask. What you would be doing in the case of your scenario is denying that family extraordinary care. You do know that many doctors in poverty areas such as the Appalacians are faced with this exact scenario. Should we just let that section of the country die? There are no jobs for families to pay medical costs.

Businesses may be in the business of making money, but, sometimes, they need to see that making $80, 000 a year for one's own family (which assuredly could live on less) is not worth preventing another family from simply living. I do not think that many in the health fields are starving. By the way, I teach pre-nursing students.

The Chicken

Another problem is that you lose any intelligible reason to complain about faceless government bureaucrats rationing health care when you also believe in the sacred right of faceless insurance company bean counters to deny coverage.

Step2, speaking just for myself, I'd rather have people, with or without faces, making broad-scale decisions like asking for higher premiums (which might be the solution in the Marty case) or denying coverage rather than micromanaging coverage. There always was a creepy similarity between HMOs and government--the same combination of apparently boundless generosity on the one hand and control-freakishness on the other. Speaking again for myself, I always objected to that on the part of the HMO bureaucrats precisely because it had that faceless, busy-body-ish, rationing aspect to it. I don't, actually, consider demanding very high premiums from Marty's family or denying him coverage to be the same type of thing.

The problem most plain to me in this post is the reason behind the business of insurance, which is not to squeeze out every last penny in profit margin, is in fact to create a large enough pool of risk so that people like Marty can be included with everyone else.

I agree in part and disagree in part. The basic purpose of insurance as such is to pool indeterminate risk of future costs, so as to share the cost equitably (i.e. in proportionate amounts) among all those who share the proportionate levels of risk. For insurance, if each of 1000 people are expected to have equal probability (2%) of needing a $10,000 surgery, and of 1000 such people it is expected that 20 of them will need such surgery, then the correct insurance cost for EACH such individual is 200. But this does not obtain for a person whose probability of needing the surgery is 100%, or 50%, or even 5%.

A person whose risk of future costs is determinately higher is not supposed to be treated the same way by the insurance company in principle, but in a proportionate way, looking to their probable costs. That is the principle.

It may be of benefit for society at large to reduce the burden of those who bear an unusually high proportionate share of probable costs. This social value, however, is not an insurance activity as such, because you are talking about sharing out known disproportionate risks as if they were equal. This is not what insurance does. If society decides to do it, then it does so as a charitable endeavor rather than as insurance.

Chicken,

I think your complaint is not about insurance as such, but about insurance managed poorly, and managed solely for profit and nothing else.

I say poorly, for if they were to do their homework properly, and noticed that your risk really is a lot lower than the "category" someone pegged you in 30 years ago, they could insure you and earn a profit. There are indeed some stupid practices in the insurance industry, and this would be one.

Nevertheless, I don't agree with your complaint that What you are doing in my case, is denying me reasonable care, which is all I ask. If you were to purchase the care from a doctor, you can get the care. The fact that an insurance company is not buying you the care is not "denying" you that medical care, any more than the fact that the bus driver in Oregon's not paying for your care is "denying" you that medical care. Until the insurance co has taken you on as a customer, they are not "denying" you anything except their insurance service.

I agree that there should be provision for people like Chicken that have disproportionate health care risks. That it be through subsidized insurance is one possible method, but surely not the self-evident only possible method.

Tony,

When the insurance company gets to decide beforehand who gets into the pool, they act as you describe and subdivide the determined risks into various categories and price them accordingly, effectively pricing some groups out of reach. When they decide to take a group as an all or nothing position, insurers combine the determinate and indeterminate risks together and equally distribute the price to the whole group. There is nothing about combining those risks that makes it charity, the insurer still makes a profit. You could say in some sense that it is a form of charity by other members within the group, since many of them are paying a slightly higher premium than if they were subdivided into their own price categories. So I place the emphasis in risk pooling on the inclusive benefits of pooling over the exclusive benefits of subdividing risks.

Lydia,

I find the idea of denying coverage far worse than delays and jumping through hoops for non-emergency care. For the reason mentioned to Tony I view high premiums to be counterproductive, although I would support high deductibles for contributing factors like smoking and obesity.

delays and jumping through hoops

Actually, in some cases it is denying coverage for *this or that thing*. Rationing on the detailed level. Again, micro-managing is the issue I was mentioning in that comment.

When they decide to take a group as an all or nothing position, insurers combine the determinate and indeterminate risks together and equally distribute the price to the whole group.

Step2, this seems more compatible with the concept of "social insurance" than insurance simply speaking. And yes, I think that it constitutes a form of charity from some members of the group to other members of the group. Probably a relatively moderate form of charity in some kinds of insurance, but that is mainly because even in the places where it is practiced, the most extreme risks are still not covered: insurers that engage in group health policies will often drop small companies that have exorbitant costs - even one person on dialysis can do it.

It is really a matter of policy rather than principle, whether to create a system where absolutely everyone is covered (including those in the extreme risk classes), but there is at least the possibility that the costs then borne price nearly everyone out of levels they can afford. Or, (more realistically) it prices out a large minority that otherwise would be able to afford insurance based on their own risk categories. What kind of charity system is it that takes away insurance from those who barely would be able to afford it in an unregulated environment, and instead gives it to others who never could have come close to affording, by regulated arrangements?

Wasn't the concept behind health insurance similar to any other insurance, to protect someone from asset loss? Auto, life, and homeowners insurance do that, and that only. There's cost / risk assesment and people determine themselves how to minimize their exposure since rates go up with claims or in the case of life insurance age=exposure. Health insurance has come to mean a health maintenance program to most people, and most people [seems to me] consider it to be unfair if it isn't at a minimum subsidized. It's a form of not taking personal responsibility.

Kevin wrote:

Stimulating demand is a normal function of markets, isn't it?

Markets haven't exactly been using moral means for a long time. TV, for example, is a vaster wasteland than even in Newton Minoow's day (one of the earliest people to call attention to this) because advertisers have discovered that sex and violence sells products.

The Chicken

Sure, but wasn't it the insurers and medical establishment who helped create this cultural expectation? Stimulating demand is a normal function of markets, isn't it?

But demand for healthcare and demand for health insurance used to be totally different things. Moreover, the HMO gets paid only beans for the healthcare I access. My co-pays are virtually nothing. Thus they are making their money in this weirdly indirect way: My husband's employer pays "premiums" for "insurance" for healthcare it is _guaranteed_ I will need and for which I pay, otherwise, virtually nothing. The HMO then tries desperately to keep this thing from ballooning out of control and over-demand from eating their profits by arm-twisting doctors to charge lower fees (or even, bizarrely, to charge _higher_ fees in some cases and thereby discourage generosity and encourage predictability via standardization of fees), by limiting visit numbers to certain types of doctors, having a list of approved doctors, making formulary lists of covered medications, and other mechanisms removed from consumer demand. I can't help wondering if the HMO model became possible only because of some weird behind-the-scenes government thing going on. Not even any sort of conspiracy, but just something the HMOs could assume would happen, like continual inflation or something like that. I have always questioned whether the HMO model was long-term sustainable, because it has always seemed unnatural.

Where is the sense of Christian vocation in that statement? Lydia, this opening sentence goes to the heart of the problem.

Kevin, saying that business and charity are different things is not saying that nobody should be generous. I'm all in favor of generosity. I just don't think the distinction should be blurred persistently and insistently between generosity and entitlement. That's one reason I'm glad to be a Protestant. The whole just wage teaching of the Catholic Church has always seemed to me to blur that distinction most deliberately. And indeed, one of the whole points of indignantly denying what Steve says is to make *gratitude unnecessary* and to prevent us from identifying generosity--to employees, or even to customers--as such. It is as though Bob Cratchit replied to Scrooge's help to Tiny Tim by growling angrily, "It's about time. You _owed_ it to us to help Tiny Tim long ago." Thus, as Jared Taylor (with whom I have some very serious other disagreements) says, the sense of entitlement curses him that takes as well as him that gives. God forbid anyone should feel grateful for anything! That is not Christian, either.

There's obviously a lot going on across three threads here, and economics is where I shut up and listen, but I will chime in to a general point not unlike what Tony said about CiV.

Is it reasonable to get into the health care business precisely because it is a business, and therefore with a view toward profit? It's an interesting question (maybe because I was oblivious to all the back-story at this blog), to which I pose a similar question:

Is it reasonable to get into the education business precisely because it is a business, and therefore with a view toward profit? Nevermind that teachers are and always will be underpaid in proportion to the goods they confer (imbo): it is a job, and a very stable one, and it typically carries a pretty decent benefits package. So what's the feeling around these parts about teachers conducting themselves in just this fashion?

Personally I think it would be monstrous, and I hate working with colleagues who got into the field with such (or similar) an attitude. They make the worst teachers for a lot of reasons, but underlying all of those is the attitude of reducing to a business that which is supposed to go on in education: the formation of the human person in its full dignity. Which I suppose just begs a further question, taking us far afield from this thread: is that what is supposed to go on in education?

Nyssan,

I think the Pope's answer is that going into teaching, or plumbing, or medicine, ought to be ALSO because you want to do something worthwhile on behalf of persons: teachers do this in a serious and fundamental way by changing the very soul of the student. Plumbers do it somewhat less significantly by allowing us to live life without odor. If you don't care about improving the soul of the student, you should not be teaching. In medicine, the problem is not that doctors and nurses don't much care about their patients - most of them do (still, though maybe I have lucked into some pretty good practitioners.) The problem is that insurers who now act as middlemen in charge of rationing, or bureaucrats doing the same, by and large don't much see their position as one in which they perform a service for persons, and try to do that service as best they can for all the persons their office impact. (Even that is a generalization - some of the insurance companies in my area have in the last few years modified their behavior away from the extreme end of the spectrum towards something more humane, at least in some areas). I can see why this happens: at least for that insurance employee whose job it is to inform a insuree "we don't cover that", the service you perform on behalf of the share-holders feels remote, and the action by which you apply the sharp end of the stick to the insuree has no feeling of service whatsoever.

If we Christians cannot bring theology into the debate, then yes, we will continue to erect this sickening Market-State hybrid of a "health" system based on a hedonistic utilitarianism.

Kevin, I thought that the Popes had already given explicit approval for the general concept of markets, though also providing that they need both direction from higher, humanizing purposes, and restraint from excesses. If that is so, it is difficult to see anything else the Popes have said indicating that there should NOT be a market role in health care (any more than that there should not be a market role in food production). Granting the natural conclusion, then, that there should be a market role in health care, and that it should be given wholesome parameters from above (i.e, society, the Church, etc) and restrained by enforcement (the state) from treating profit as a final good, that sounds pretty much like a market-state hybrid.

Or did I misunderstand you? Are you objecting to the current market-state hybrid, admittedly inferior to the point of collapse, in favor of another vision of a hybrid that partakes of both true solidarity and subsidiarity, and is sustainable because it looks to true human capacities and needs?

Kevin, I think I agree with you, if we can understand your comment advocates of both market and state each tout the "neutrality" their systems as referring to the advocates of some versions of those systems. For example, I understand by a market system any of a number of possible systems, including those which have free markets and no governmental or social restraint, or free markets that have social restraints but no legal interference, or semi-free markets that operate freely in many ways but also have restraints from society and the law in certain respects, or even (going out on a limb here) markets that are partially controlled by government. All with any number of potential anthropological justifications, including religion, natural law, and various -isms.

The current version of market that we have right now is an odd hodge-podge of partly free, partly restrained, partly controlled component systems, where the theoretical foundations are in Lockean or Keynesian philosophies free of any serious consideration of God, and where in practice a man who won't keep up with his slimiest competitor is in danger of going out of business. But given that there are other versions of market systems, I hesitate to ascribe the evils to the the mere fact that it uses market approaches.

The main problem with your framing of this issue is that you assume Christians in business operate on the "profit" motive. They ought not. They ought to operate on the "service in love for their neighbor" motive, which means that they do in fact prioritize their own neighbors and family and especially the Church, and that they seek to best serve their neighbors.

In Marty's case, he might well be rejected NOT because you're pursuing "profit" but because taking him and his relatives on, over the mid and long-term, may destroy your capacity to serve others well (his costs might raise premiums for others who might not be able to afford the higher prices, etc.). BUT, you might also accept Marty's case, on the basis of undeserved charity, if you can afford to while not compromising the service of others to whom you are providing insurance, e.g. by simply subsidizing his costs with your own personal monies. This would quite obviously be charity.

Being charity, Marty does not have a right to demand it, for he does not deserve it.

In the end, I agree with Clayton, though I will not let you get away with attributing the reductive "profit" motive to Christian men and women who are seeking to best serve those whom they are responsible for. That also means I disagree with those who see the sole aim of business as making money ("profit is a sufficient justification"), for this is reductive.

Step2:

Another problem is that you lose any intelligible reason to complain about faceless government bureaucrats rationing health care when you also believe in the sacred right of faceless insurance company bean counters to deny coverage.

The main difference here is, the "faceless insurance company bean counters" can't stop you from getting insurance somewhere else, if you can find somebody willing to offer insurance at a price you find amenable. In a single-payer public system, if the government refuses me or a family member the care we need/seek, they also thereby bar me from getting it anywhere else. They essentially violate my right to even try and take care of myself and my family.

Also, the idea that it's immoral for an insurance company to refuse insurance is BS. I am refusing people insurance right now in a sense, by virtue of being a software engineer rather than a health insurance provider. Am I immoral for being in a different line of business from health insurance? Am I somehow obligated to help pay the medical bills of people I don't even know? There was a time, not so long ago, that there were no such things as health insurance companies. Were everybody's rights being violated by their nonexistence? You don't have some sort of inalienable right to have some 3rd party help with medical expenses, period.

Lets say I were to offer one other person health insurance (in addition to my job as a software engineer). Let's say I were to make an agreement with one other person, and write up a contract stating that they would pay me a certain amount each month, and in return I agreed to shell out a certain amount to help pay their medical bills if they ever need it.

Does making an insurance contract with one other person mean that I am somehow now obligated to offer insurance, with the same terms and everything, to the next person that comes along, even if they are a walking train-wreck whose medical bills will surely clean me out and consign me to poverty?

I'm not obligated to donate gobs of money to someone else's medical bills now that I'm a software engineer who doesn't provide insurance at all, so why am I suddenly obligated to do such a thing for everybody once I do it for anybody? Please explain.

I don't think one can make a sharp distinction between "operating on a profit motive" and being concerned about destroying one's capacity to serve others. In fact, _since_ as a matter of empirical fact the free market works so well to serve everybody, these two become inextricably bound up together. One of the problems with Christian critiques of capitalism is precisely the assumption that the profit motive is bad and greedy as opposed to being a motive to do something well and make a wealth-generating business work well, which will in itself be to the good of a lot more people than if the person did so much charity as to harm his business.

Lydia:

One of the problems with Christian critiques of capitalism is precisely the assumption that the profit motive is bad and greedy as opposed to being a motive to do something well and make a wealth-generating business work well, which will in itself be to the good of a lot more people than if the person did so much charity as to harm his business.

Whatever other "Christian critiques of capitalism" may say, Catholic social teaching does not characterize the profit motive as "bad and greedy" in itself. It characterizes the profit motive as bad and greedy when it motivates the capitalist instead of rather than as part of helping others, such as customers and workers, attain a measure of fulfillment through the business. That's because, when he seeks profit regardless of the latter, the businessman treats people merely as instruments rather than also as persons with intrinsic dignity—which is the classic definition of exploitation.

Best,
Mike

Being charity, Marty does not have a right to demand it, for he does not deserve it.

Well said. One might as well say that grace is deserved by the fact that we are born broken wretches in the eyes of God.

Mike L,

It characterizes the profit motive as bad and greedy when it motivates the capitalist instead of rather than as part of helping others, such as customers and workers, attain a measure of fulfillment through the business. That's because, when he seeks profit regardless of the latter, the businessman treats people merely as instruments rather than also as persons with intrinsic dignity—which is the classic definition of exploitation.

The two motives balance each other out quite well. The profit motive keeps the motive to help others in balance and is a bulwark against the exploitation of the doctor by people who could arrange their finances and property to buy the doctor's services. Likewise, the motive to help others lifts the profit motive from base greed to healthy ambition.

Kevin,

Do you suppose that a businessman that make frequent donations to certain charities on the one hand actually does so primarily due to selfless, charitable reasons?

Indeed, there are several who only do so due to some calculated tax benefits which he intends to reap!

Further, do you really deem a system that seeks to essentially garnish a portion of wages of not only the wealthy but, inevitably, entire middle class families too is actually a system that revolves around the Christian virtue of charity?

I suppose that if I were to hold a middle class family or even an affluent one, for that matter, at gunpoint (i.e., with the full backing of the federal government), to demand of them a portion of their income for redistribution to the seemingly less fortunate; that the proceeds of such transaction (at least, according to your views) would purportedly be deemed an actually charitable act, no?

You will have to forgive my notion of charity then as actually one that primarily involves a person freely giving to the less unfortunate purely out of their own heart (i.e., an act of volition and pure intention) and not due to some stiff mandate that demands them to do so.

Yes and God only knows how badly our impulse towards the good needs to be off-set by market corrections. One reads" Lives of the Saints" and sees how holy men and women were protected and sustained by the mysterious workings of the Invisible Hand. Praise the Lord and pass the annual report.

Kevin, before you turn on the ol' Sarcasmo 3000 to full power, you might actually want to make sure you've made a reasonable attempt to understand what your target has written. If you can turn it down for a second (I ask a lot, I know) you will see that I specifically said that the profit motive is a bulwark against exploitation of the doctor by those who have at best a weak case for charity.

Kevin: Did I not make myself clear about the conditions for your readmittance to my threads?

I rather think that I did.

step2: you speak of "the reason behind the business of insurance" - which, according to you, is "to create a large enough pool of risk so that people like Marty can be included with everyone else."

*the reason???*

Funny - I had not taken you for a Platonist.

I would have thought that lots of different people have lots of different reasons for participating in the insurance business, and I see no reason whatever to privilege the particular "reason" that you single out.

Michael L. writes that "Catholic social teaching...characterizes the profit motive as bad and greedy when it motivates the capitalist instead of rather than as part of helping others, such as customers and workers, attain a measure of fulfillment through the business. That's because, when he seeks profit regardless of the latter, the businessman treats people merely as instruments rather than also as persons with intrinsic dignity—which is the classic definition of exploitation."

Wow - so current "Catholic social teaching" is pretty much just warmed-over Kant ("treats people merely as instruments rather than also as persons with intrinsic dignity") with a nod toward Marx ("the classic definition of exploitation")?

The Deuce writes:

"...the 'faceless insurance company bean counters' can't stop you from getting insurance somewhere else, if you can find somebody willing to offer insurance at a price you find amenable."

Bingo, The Deuce.

[Sung to the tune of George Harrison's song, Imagine]

Imagine there's no Insurance
It's easy if you try
No safety net below us
Above us only free market sky
Imagine all the sick people
Living for today.

Unfortunately, I can't finish the song without risking copyright violation [satire is not protected, only parody, sigh]. This seems to summarize some of the discussions, above.

Really, though, suppose we got rid of insurance. Is there a better way to do healthcare without resorting to socialized medicine? Have we just stopped looking? Where is the creative spirit in America, today. Ignore the government, find the solution. If you build it [and it works], they will come...

The Chicken

**so current "Catholic social teaching" is pretty much just warmed-over Kant ("treats people merely as instruments rather than also as persons with intrinsic dignity") with a nod toward Marx ("the classic definition of exploitation")**

Quite right. We all know, of course, that the real answer is baptized Milton Friedman.

"seemingly less fortunate' aristocles

You simply can't get it through your thick skull that there really ARE people who are struggling financially through no fault of their own.

"You will have to forgive my notion of charity then as actually one that primarily involves a person freely giving to the less unfortunate purely out of their own heart (i.e., an act of volition and pure intention) and not due to some stiff mandate that demands them to do so." aristocles

And suppose not enough of us do give and the problem persists. Then what? Are those who are giving supposed to allow the hard-hearted to imperil the less fortunate? Or should we take action, through our elected representatives, to make them do right by their fellow men? Granted it won't be charity if they are so required, but that is their problem. At least the poor would have received the assistance they needed.


You simply can't get it through your thick skull that there really ARE people who are struggling financially through no fault of their own.

And you can't get it through your own superbly thick skull that you can't solve the problem by forcing virtually poor middle class families a portion of what already is a pittance of a salary!

Why don't you read the latest article at the WSJ concerning the matter, less you feel the need to crucify already struggling middle class families?

Must be nice being immensely ignorant and considerably deficient in not only Christian charity but also cognizant capability, too, no?

Aristocles,

And you can't get it through your own superbly thick skull that you can't solve the problem by forcing virtually poor middle class families a portion of what already is a pittance of a salary!

The two of you come from a different fundamental perspective. Robert is reminiscent of the disciples that Jesus rebuked in Luke 9 for attempting to force Christianity on an unwilling village. I bet it doesn't even matter to him that not a pittance of spiritual good would come out of that coercion, and that a lot of evil is far more likely.

In another post here, I struck a nerve when I brought up the issue of HSAs and FSAs. You know why? Because it shows how irresponsible most people are. Most people can easily afford to set up a HSA or FSA and put some of their income into them so as to preempt most health care costs. If most families had a HSA and deposited at least $1000 into it per year, they'd have more than enough money later on to cover emergency medical bills.

Dear Aristocles,

I do understand Christian charity. Charity is a virtue. Charity is an act of the will acting for the good of another. Neither virtue nor the will can be forced, at least not ultimately.

People who do not want to give money to support others do not have to. They may suffer consequences both morally and legally, but no one can force them to do good.

What is your definition of Christian charity? I have given the classic definition that has been used by the Church since at least the thirteenth century. Obviously, one cannot be forced to be charitable. One can be coerced (although not absolutely, because of free will) to give money to the poor, but that, per se, is not Christian charity unless the disposition of the heart matches the outstretched hand giving up the money.

What would you like to see people do?

Personally, I would love to see a society where everyone loved his neighbor as himself, but that isn't the case in contemporary America. Many people put more stock in the law written in books than the law written in their hearts. There is no reason that God cannot make use of that law for a good end. If you want to argue that being forced to give money is a case of doing evil that good may happen, then I could agree, from a strictly worldly perspective, but being forced to give up a portion of one's goods for the sake of another is akin to a parent telling his child to go clean their room. The child may argue that they own their time and the parent is coercing it from them, but this argument only holds if the child truly exclusively owns his own time. No one owns his only money to the exclusion of the rest of society. The whole concept of money pre-supposes
society. Society, under the fourth commandment, has the right, within reason, to ask certain things of its people. To deny this is to ask for anarchy. You may not agree with the reasons. Fair enough. The reasons may be wrong. Fair enough. If the reasons are allowable within the moral sphere, then one ought to follow the law. If they are not, one has no obligation, however, at that point the law becomes coercive.

I guess the issue boils down to whether or not under Catholic moral principles the state has a right (or even a duty) to ask those living in a society to help those who cannot help themselves. Are you arguing that this is not the case?

By the way, the reason that the common pot method of governance did not work in the days of the early Church did not have to do with the Church, but because they were trying to do so within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which interfered with the process. We see almost the identical problem in hospitals today where Christian medical providers try to co-exist with pro-aborts. If the hospital could be run in a completely Christian fashion, it would serve the poor much better, just as if the early Church could have been run free of the influence of the Romans, it would have served the poor much better.

The Chicken

By the way, the reason that the common pot method of governance did not work in the days of the early Church did not have to do with the Church, but because they were trying to do so within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, which interfered with the process. We see almost the identical problem in hospitals today where Christian medical providers try to co-exist with pro-aborts. If the hospital could be run in a completely Christian fashion, it would serve the poor much better, just as if the early Church could have been run free of the influence of the Romans, it would have served the poor much better.

The communal approach didn't work because it takes a very special class of person to make it work without coercion. It was never a viable model for Christian life once the Church expanded into general society.

"Robert is reminiscent of the disciples that Jesus rebuked in Luke 9 for attempting to force Christianity on an unwilling village. I bet it doesn't even matter to him that not a pittance of spiritual good would come out of that coercion, and that a lot of evil is far more likely."

No one said anything about forcing Christianity on anyone. I'm talking about legally requiring citizens to meet their obligations to the poor should the principle of charity not move them. Our Lord said nothing forbidding that and I have cited several Gospel passages indicating a mandate for such action. Plus, I believe, as I have stated several times already, that the funding for health care reform is available IN SPADES amongst the wealth the affluent hoard and/or spend on luxuries. (Of course the working class will still have to pay its fair share.)

$1000 a year is a lot of money for a working class family, Mike, let alone the indigent. And you are only talking about emergencies; not check-ups, dental/vision/mental health care, prescriptions, etc.

Chicken,

If the Chickens, Kevins, and Robert Allens of the world are so stubborn so as to think that the mission of Christianity is actually coextensive with the Socialist enterprise, then God help us all -- hopefully, we don't repeat that rather unfortunate history yet another time and suffer the same damning fate as those who came before us and attempted a similar endeavour to make real the abstract man for the good of all humanity a la Marx!

Although theirs may not exactly have operated under any sort of religious but, instead, simply some secular prerogative; regardless, at the very least, they did not disguise their purpose under the veil of an religious sort and, in particular, that of Christianity, which ironically (apparently unbeknownst to some) actually betrays the very creed upon which Christianity itself is founded.

For it is indeed Christian to freely give out of one's heart alms for the poor and provide assistance to the severely less fortunate, pursuant to Christ's teachings in the Gospels (in particular, the passage in Matthew 25) and our love of God; however, I fail to see where Christ Himself had advocated quite specifically the promotion of the socialist enterprise, which serves only to force acquisitions of greater portions of people's hard-earned wages (mind you, not only the affluent, but the already terribly suffering middle class families too), and that this is actually somehow serving the Christian mission. If anything, this is but a facade marked by what will ultimately and inevitably degenerate into certain tyranny by Big Gov, forcing particular families into severely greater economic hardship and, even worse, poverty!

Of course, I am not the one abiding by what is clearly more so the Marx catechism than any actually Christian Catechism; with all this talk about the state needing to recognize the being of man and not merely some abstraction of him; that is, to serve particular individuals and woe to the state that does not do so -- it's amazing that Marx himself isn't now hitherto named the Patron Saint of men such as these!

"The communal approach didn't work because it takes a very special class of person to make it work without coercion. It was never a viable model for Christian life once the Church expanded into general society."

So what are you saying: the rules changed when we began to live amongst non-Christians? That we ourselves were no longer bound by Our Lord's mandates because we had to contend with heathens? NO, the model found in Acts is what we must advocate @ all times and all places, no matter how much resistance it meets. We are called to build up the Kingdom of Heaven while we are here on earth, not accommodate those who reject it.

Steve:

Wow - so current "Catholic social teaching" is pretty much just warmed-over Kant ("treats people merely as instruments rather than also as persons with intrinsic dignity") with a nod toward Marx ("the classic definition of exploitation")?

You said it, brother. I've learned that it is a good idea to reach for your wallet whenever somebody invokes the amorphous Rorschach blob that Catholic socialists on the Internet call "Catholic social teaching".

It really is the perfect invention. It allows them to promote totalitarian confiscation of other people's property a la Marx, and be Pharisaic religious scolds all at the same time! How cool is that? And the best part is, since the "Catholic social teaching" they invoke is a sort of fuzzy, decentralized blob spread out over times and places with no firm canon, they don't even have to cite anything specific! They can just shout "Catholic social teaching!" in your face at the top of their lungs over and over. It's as easy as it is fun!

I say we one-up them, though. Whenever arguing an economic matter with Robert, Chicken, or Kevin, we should all agree to end every post with "Cause GOD said so, you heathen!"

The Deuce:

Just to be clear, the "Catholic Social Teaching" that these make-weights employ is their statist or, worse, socialist interpretation of such teaching; less, you mistakenly mischaracterize the former as actual teaching promoted and even advanced by the Church, which is quite a far cry when their very details are put to closer examination.

**Just to be clear, the "Catholic Social Teaching" that these make-weights employ is their statist or, worse, socialist interpretation of such teaching**

Well, as the beaver said when his house caught fire, "Hot dam!" Who knew that Chesterton and Belloc were socialists and/or statists! And Weaver, Bradford, and all the Southern Conservatives! Not to mention many of the (apparently faux) conservatives at ISI! And Front Porch Republic! And the Southern Agrarians both new and old! One is tempted to view even Russell Kirk with suspicion!

Fascinating that all these folks who have many points of agreement with Catholic social teaching are actually socialists and statists! Who knew?

"which serves only to force acquisitions of greater portions of people's hard-earned wages (mind you, not only the affluent, but the already terribly suffering middle class families too)"

No one is talking about garnishing wages but the ill-gotten gains (profits) of those who pay them.

If Our Lord did not advocate something close to socialism why were the 1st Christian communities socialist in nature?

aristocles:

Just to be clear, the "Catholic Social Teaching" that these make-weights employ is their statist or, worse, socialist interpretation of such teaching; less, you mistakenly mischaracterize the former as actual teaching promoted and even advanced by the Church, which is quite a far cry when their very details are put to closer examination.

Yep, I understand that. I tried to make it apparent that "Catholic social teaching" as they construe it is a sort of vague, amorphous blob that says whatever they want it to say, and that exists primarily in their own minds.

Someone who was serious would cite specific writings, encyclicals, and paragraphs to support their view that Christianity demands government-mandated property confiscation and redistribution, rather than gesturing vaguely at "Catholic social teaching". Of course, that would require effort, and it would also turn out to be a fruitless endeavor, which is why they're constantly talking about "Catholic Social Teaching" rather than citing actual Catholic social teachings.

No one is talking about garnishing wages but the ill-gotten gains (profits) of those who pay them.

That's right Robert, such a plan as this will only garnish the wages of the wealthy; too bad, the ugly truth of the matter yet remains: it'll inevitably involve the garnishing of wages from such middle class families already overly burdened in these excruciating economic times!

What's worse, even with monies coming from all these, it'll still be insufficient given the extent of this socialist enterprise of Obamacare!

Read the news, for goodness sakes; if you're unable to tolerate such an extensive endeavour into the subject, go read at the very least the latest articles from WSJ.

The Deuce: Thanks.

Rob G: There's a sharp divide between (Catholic) social justice and that concerning the matter of entitlements; a person of keen intellect as yourself (which admittedly is nothing to sneeze at) is capable of such distinction.

Even further, Chesterton & Belloc may have indeed been exponents of what they might have very well interpreted to be Catholic Social Justice; however, to unilaterally deem these as definitively Catholic Social Justice seems to me to be a mere exaggeration rendered by certain die-hard aficionados based solely on personal opinion.

robert allen:

No one is talking about garnishing wages but the ill-gotten gains (profits) of those who pay them.

So you're not talking about confiscating people's wages. You're just talking about confiscating the money used to pay their wages. Why, that's a huuuuge difference!

If Our Lord did not advocate something close to socialism why were the 1st Christian communities socialist in nature?
They weren't. The early Christians shared freely. They didn't forcibly steal from each other. They especially didn't make any attempt to take the possessions of non-Christians and redistribute them to others. Go and read the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Note that it explicitly says that their sin was not in keeping some of the profit, but rather in lying.
NO, the model found in Acts is what we must advocate @ all times and all places, no matter how much resistance it meets. We are called to build up the Kingdom of Heaven while we are here on earth, not accommodate those who reject it.

Robert, why don't you try reading the New Testament again. Even within the times of the Apostles, the model that occurred in Jerusalem for a time never spread to the broader sphere of fledgling Christianity. There is no evidence in the Bible that the Apostolic Corinthians, or Ephesians, or Galatians, or Romans, undertook the same arrangement. The fact that Paul had to write to invoke aid from elsewhere indicates that, separate from such explicit calls, there NEVER WAS an attempt to generalize the one-for-all and all-for-one communal arrangement such as in Jerusalem. Further, St. Peter makes it clear that even when it was going on, Christians were not obliged to live that way, they were free to choose not to.

If this model was the only righteous model of Christian life, why did not Paul censure the Roman Christians for not following it?
Let's get real here and try to remember that God gave us our intellects as well as our hearts for good purpose.

Ari, I was being (partly) facetious. I know that there are Catholic leftists who swing Church social teaching their way. But other than Mr. Allen, who here is doing that, either on this thread or on the others?

Those of us who find some agreement with Catholic social teaching as described above are no more socialists or statists than any of the folks I mentioned. That was my point.

Dear Aristocles,

It is you who say that I somehow think that the mission Christianity is co-extensive with the socialist enterprise, not I and I resent having such words put in my mouth. For the record, I am not in favor of socialism, at all, period. Socialism is a doctrine of men and fallible becuase of the defects of Original Sin. On what the Church has to say about our obligations to our neighbor, aparently, you and I disagree, but in trying to discuss that matter, I was not trying to espouse any sort of social doctrine, but rather a religious doctrine that should bind all men in a perfect society, so quit trying to derive what I think about matters in fallen world from my comments about the other.

For the record, I am not in favor of Obama's healthcare proposals, especially at this time in history. I can think of many other ways to solve the problem of how to deal with healthcare and so can many others, but, unfortunately, these ideas will never make it to the floor of the Senate so a really good exploration of alternatives is not going to be made. If you want to find fault somewhere, this is one place to start. Congress has, essentially, blinded itself, like a running back running for a goal post and it cannot see people on the sidelines telling it that its about to be tackled and lose the football.

Even though we will probably never experience a really Christian solution to the problem of healthcare, we can try to come close. The whole idea of, "It's my money and nobody can tell me what to do about it - let other people get their own money," put forth by some Conservatives strikes me as a very cold, unfeeling way to love one's neighbor. Some people do try to and will try to cheat the system, whatever system is put in place, but some people simply have difficulty because of circumstances beyond thier control. Simple human decency should impel one to want to reach out to those people.

For instance, I cannot get health care, essentially, unless I happen to be a millionare. None of this is due to anything I have done. I have to depend or will have to depend on others for help, since a so-called free market has determined that I am not to be covered. At what point does human suffering move people to want to help of their own free will? I cannot do much, financially, to help others, but I do what I can whenever the situation presents itself.

Socialism is when I give my money to the state (or have it taken away) so that the state can use it as it sees fit for the "common good," as it defines it. That can be very dangerous. Even trying to help a homeless man on the stree can be dangerous and I have gotten burned in the process, but so did the early Christians when some people falsely professed Christianity so they could be thrown in jail so that the Christian community would take care of them (these people, reverted to paganism in time to save their skins, of course).

Love is a risk. Asking people to take that risk is not socialism - far from it. You have ignored some of what I have written in my posts, above, preferring, instead, it seems, to looking only for those points that support your notion that I am a socialist. Is anyone who asks for mercy and compassion, by your definition, a socialist? I think most people on this forum have suffered enough in life, you included, to know better.

Sometimes, govenments try for the goal of compassion, but wind up being merely sentimentalists and whiners. Sometimes, they cloak sharp teeth under the mask of compassion. Sometimes, they are merely incompetent and bungle things, badly.

I will pray for any solution that promotes the basic dignity of those whom it is aimed at. That is our responsibility, as Christians. Exactly how this is done, I have little say over. I can grouse and complain all I want, but in the end, all I can do is pray.

The Chicken.

Lest I be misunderstood, in my post, above, I said that socialism acting under the guise of the ruling parties definition of the common good was not a good thing, since that definition is often highly arbitrary. I did not mean to imply in my remarks, later, that it should be risked. I put my paragraphs too close together.

What I was trying to say wa that even though one can exclude socialistic soutions, in fcat, any solutions, including free market solutions that attempt to aid the poor, will cause the people administering them to run the risk of being burned.

Sorry for the confusion. This text-only browser makes it hard to edit and write. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't seem to load the website completely, some of the time and I have to resort to this browser.

Since economics isn't really my specialty, I think I'll leave the comments to the experts, from now on.

The Chicken

Pursuant to the origins of this thread, the profit motive is an insufficient intellectual tool because it fails to describe an adequate teleology

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Business+as+an+ethical+standard.-a0199464289

ie to conduct an adequate price discovery for those parties(*) endowed with the means to pursue the end, we would need to gauge the acts of the 'you-name-the-commmercial-intercourse' business as a good instance of the essence ['commercial-intercourse-of-the-name-you-picked' business] compared to other instances of essences in that class (aka comparison shopping aka free trade aka "markets" since even dialects is a market in ideas, no?). Before we may consider charity to the persons unable to participate(*parties without the means to pursue the ends) the good must first be defended from the depradations of moral hazard -- in the exchange, good actors may be harmed when bad actors, not interested in mutual intercourse but intent on rapacious self-aggrandizement establish "regulations" that minimize risks in their favor, ie a minority subsidize their personal exposure to risk at the expense of the majority becoming MORE exposed to risk. Thus before caritas comes JUSTICE: this "plunder" "pillage" whatever kind of barbarism you favor (uncivilized conduct all, since the commonwealth -- or market -- that makes the encounter and exchange possible is violated), the establishment of equitable concessions and conventions that minimize exposure to existential vagaries & risks that permit leisure time to be made available to the intellect to contemplate processes for distribution of available goods or devise campaigns to avert foreseeable harms).

The theological difference between Catholic cosmology and a Protestant one is that we are powerless to create "goods," we merely access and exploit that which our Creator delivered into our stewardship. Stewardship requires justice first. In gratitude for the gifts we have been given we owe a debt of 'universal destination' or SOLIDARITY to the depositors, all human persons, who lived, are living and are yet to be born, ie they must be distributed not hoarded. Distribution can indeed be coerced - in the first republic of the family, an absent parent will have their wages docked for the upkeep of their offspring to be "distributed" to his or her abandoned spouse. The injustice of our times is that we have financed a social scam (insurance doesn't come close to describing the Ponzi scheme of medicare and SSI) on the backs of our children. If the AIG debacle had taken its ultimate course, many so-called "insurers" would be out of business, and we'd all be a lot closer to having the honest discussions this thread attempted to engender. US healthcare is in crisis, economically on the cusp of an implosion similar to the havoc wreaked by Katrina to real estate values along the Gulf - no home insurance=no mortgage, no mortgage=no sale, no sale=no price, no price=no market, no market=no economy, no economy=territory depopulates. Civilizations are established by mutual cooperation, built by trust relationships hedged by sanctions for bad actors.

The second Catholic principle, SUBSIDIARITY, can help hedge the bad acting. In our topic under consideration, health care, that begins at the lowest denominated participant in the commonwealth of society: a person responsible for himself (* or parents/care-givers, in parties without the means to pursue the ends). To meet those needs he is unable to provide for himself, he partipates in a market in goods or services that offer these as needed at a price negotiated with the provider at the time of delivery, or he may elect to participate in a hedge fund for those occasions of need he foresees arising (* for his dependendants also) at times he may not have the means (catastrophic accident, terminal illness, incapacity of disability old age) This hedging may be polycentric, i.e. he has freedom of association to pool his resources with others in a similar predicament, in a trade union, in a Church fraternity, with public authorities at the local and national level. But the moral hazard of the association is his to guage - he must examine the regulations that govern the fiduciary trust of the goods held in common.

The biggest obstacle to reform of healthcare in America is that subsidiarity is NOT TRANSPARENT, our autonomy is at best a kind of "blindfaith": we have no way of guaging the fiduciary risks at the root of the humoungous Wall Street debacle we are in the throws of right now. One thing we can be sure of, we have betrayed our duty to the generations as yet unborn by financing unfunded mandates - we have "rationed" ourselves a good life by eating our children's rations.

Markets provide a means to ration morally. Limits mean we all have to make such judgement calls daily, each economic act is a moral act, to be human means to act justly.

Freedom of association as charity means a gratuitous gift of the means to attain goods IN EXCESS OF WHAT IS JUST. Being fair is not a virtue it is a duty. If we have not the charity in our hearts to adopt disabled children into our own realm of private care, our own families, we have a duty to see that they are provided for under the commonwealth of the civilization we are members of - our parish, our village, our city, our State, or our Nation for as long as they shall be dependent on others for their wellbeing. We may also extend a freedom of association to citizens of other nations who lack the means to pursue the end of integral human development, and many of us do support religious missions that educate and ministrate to advance the development of persons to self-sufficiency and participation in global intercourse. Subsidiarity implies that those in a position to assist those unable to help themselves have a duty to organize the association of persons necessary to permit participation at higher levels of technical contributions. Profit is not a suitable metric for judging whether the technical contributions are valuable or not to those unable to price the exchange independantly. An enterprise or the rules that govern how an enterprise conducts its business may not limit the extant freedoms of the levels subsiding beneath it - which is what happens now, where an OB-GYN may not deliver babies without charge to mothers without the means to match the customary fee (BLUECROSS will sue him otherwise for undercutting the price discounts they have negotiated in network!); or where a NY doctor may not offer a low-cost payment plan to his pool of patients, since to do so is to offer "insurance" and you need to pay for a State license to offer insurance!

These incongruities in logic and barriers to charity [Augustine's congruent grace or Aquinas' efficacious grace] will hamper any progress in resolving the irrationalities of the social sphere in modern life. We would do well to consider the prophecy of Jean-jacques Rousseau in his Contrat Social Lib II cap.8 "The empire of Russia will decide to subjugate Europe and will be subjugated itself. Its Tartar subjects will become its master and ours" mentioned by Romano Amerio in Iota Unum, where the "Tartar subjects" of Eastern Eurasia are today's Chinese schooled in Marx, perfecting State socialism to an inhumane art form... admired of the financiers at the levers of power the world over, for the ease with which they can dispose of funds and resources in pursuit of whatever utilitarian desire their darkened intellects embrace, yesterdays Olympics is tomorrow's Wall Street hostile takeover... talk of justice and charity will be vague memories when China Inc. buys up what's left of the American economy...

robert allen:

Is this truly the new order you and your cohorts want established in our country?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574316183688201934.html

To put this in actual dollars, a worker earning, say, $70,000 a year could lose some $5,600 in take home pay to cover the costs of ObamaCare. And, by the way, this is in addition to the 2.5% tax that the individual worker would have to pay on gross income, if he doesn’t buy the high-priced health insurance that the government will mandate. In sum, that’s a near 10-percentage point tax on wages and salaries on top of the 15% that already hits workers to finance Medicare and Social Security.

Even Democrats are aware that his tax would come out of the wallets of the very workers they pretend to be helping, so they inserted a provision on page 147 of the bill prohibiting firms from cutting salaries to pay the tax. Thus they figure they can decree that wages cannot fall even as costs rise. Of course, all this means is that businesses would lay off some workers, or hire fewer new ones, or pay lower starting salaries or other benefits to the workers they do hire.

Cornell economists Richard Burkhauser and Kosali Simon predicted in a 2007 National Bureau of Economic Research study that a payroll tax increase of about this magnitude plus the recent minimum wage increase will translate into hundreds of thousands of lost jobs for those with low wages. Pay or play schemes, says Mr. Burkauser, “wind up hurting the very low-wage workers they are supposed to help.” The CBO agrees, arguing that play or pay policies “could reduce the hiring of low-wage workers, whose wages could not fall by the full cost of health insurance or a substantial play-or-pay fee if they were close to the minimum wage.”

To make matters worse, many workers and firms would have to pay the Pelosi tax even if the employer already provides health insurance. That’s because the House bill requires firms to pay at least 72.5% of health-insurance premiums for individual workers and 65% for families in order to avoid the tax. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in 2008 found that about three in five small businesses fail to meet the Pelosi test and will have to pay the tax. In these instances, the businesses will have every incentive simply to drop their coverage.

A new study by Sageworks, Inc., a financial consulting firm, runs the numbers on the income statements of actual companies. It looks at three types of firms with at least $5 million in sales: a retailer, a construction company and a small manufacturer. The companies each have total payroll of between $750,000 and $1 million a year. Assuming the firms absorb the cost of the payroll tax, their net profits fall by one-third on average. That is on top of the 45% income tax and surtax that many small business owners would pay as part of the House tax scheme, so the total reduction in some small business profits would climb to nearly 80%. These lower after-tax profits would mean fewer jobs.

To put it another way, the workers who will gain health insurance from ObamaCare will pay the steepest price for it in either a shrinking pay check, or no job at all.

Post a comment


Bold Italic Underline Quote

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.