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May
7, 2007
VOL.
45, NO. 9Oakland,
CA
Leading
U.S. doctor says health workers
need to argue for 'just and valid' system
ROME (CNS)
-- Health professionals need to band together to “argue for a morally
valid and just” health care system, said a prominent U.S. Catholic
physician.
“We as health professionals have enormous moral power, and we’re
not using it. By that I mean we’re not alerting our society to what’s
happening to patients and saying that we feel it needs to be improved,”
said Edmund Pellegrino, a longtime leader in developing bioethical standards
based on Catholic values. He also is chairman of the U.S. President’s
Council on Bioethics.
In an April 20 talk at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University in
Rome, the 87-year-old former president of The Catholic University of America
spoke on “Justice and Fairness in Health Care” as part of
his week-long series of lectures sponsored by the university’s bioethics
department.
The number of Americans without health care coverage is on the rise; as
of 2004 approximately 45.8 million people were uninsured, according to
the U.S. Census Bureau.
But insured or not, people are not getting the kind of health care they
need, Pellegrino said. Although policymakers talk about various ways to
improve health care, he said, no system will be adequate unless it is
tackled as an ethical or moral problem, not just an economic or political
one.
“It’s a fact that certain members of our society become sick,
old, and frail ... and you can judge the quality of a society by how they
treat their sick, old, frail and dying members, including foreigners,”
he said.
People need to decide whether health care is a right, a privilege, a commodity
or a moral obligation of a good society, he said.
In the United States, health care is treated as a commodity or a product
or service that can be bought or sold for the highest price the market
can bear “and that ‘virus’ is being spread to the rest
of the world,” he said.
“The sick have a moral claim on all of us” because of their
human dignity, he said, adding that he believes health care is a moral
obligation owed to all human beings.
He also said people were “wasting money” because 25 percent
to 30 percent of health care costs go to administrative expenses.
Pellegrino said people had a responsibility to take care of their health,
but if people smoke or take drugs “and are then sick and dying,
have they lost their human dignity?”
When asked about what insurance companies could do to offer a more equitable
or just allocation of health care, Pellegrino said he “would eliminate
the insurance companies. We don’t need them and they’re making
a profit on the blood, sweat and tears” of people who are sick,
suffering or dying.
“By the way, I’m not a rebel, I’m not a socialist, nor
am I a communist. I believe what I am saying is consistent with the notion
of Christian charity,” he said.
After all, he said, “what did Jesus do when he wasn’t preaching?
He was healing, day in, day out.”
