The AHCA and Christian principles

Last week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its assessment of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), and it wasn’t good. Not for anyone who ever has needed or ever will need healthcare, at least. The effects this proposal would have are truly horrifying to me, and it defies all my efforts to understand how anyone could support such a piece of legislation. So, if you believe that the AHCA is good for America, please, I welcome your comments and feedback. I earnestly would love to engage this topic in a respectful discussion and gain some understanding about the reasons people support it. Because when I look at the effects it will likely have I see only a multitude of reasons to oppose this bill.

An estimated 23 million people will become uninsured if the AHCA gets implemented. More insidiously, many people who think they have health insurance could find that their insurance doesn’t actually cover anything meaningful or expensive, as the AHCA would allow states to choose to lighten regulations requiring insurance policies to cover essential benefits. Similarly, states could also choose to allow insurance providers to charge more—often exorbitant amounts—to people with pre-existing conditions. You know, people like me who have required medical treatment in the past and as such are likely to need more in the future. I think what breaks my heart the most though are the cuts to Medicaid that will result in an estimated 14 million more uninsured people through reduced enrollment. That’s 14 million of the most financially vulnerable people in this country who will be without health insurance as a result of the AHCA. That’s 14 million people who might be just like me, with major health issues preventing them from working, forcing them to rely on Medicaid, the last healthcare-related safety net our government offers. Finally, adding insult to injury—on top of the wide range of regulatory and funding cuts that will negatively impact all but the healthy and wealthy in this country—the AHCA includes tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

The blatant prioritization of money over human lives represented by the AHCA sickens me to my core. First, as an American citizen, I find the AHCA repugnant. A government should protect its own citizens, especially its citizens whose health or finances make them vulnerable. Second, as a Christian I find the AHCA morally reprehensible. Christ calls us to care for the “least of these,” like the poor, the sick, and the marginalized. The AHCA by contrast harms people who happen to have health issues, face poverty, or both. Now, I believe a Government that provides freedom of religion shouldn’t govern by the principles of any one religion, so it should be somewhat irrelevant that the AHCA stands contrary to Christian principles. But it isn’t.

Most of the legislators who sponsored and voted for the AHCA profess to be Christians, and many of them even cited their ideas of Christian principles as reasons to support this bill. Dangerous theology like an unhealthy emphasis on personal responsibility—a cheap euphemism for selfishness and ignoring our shared responsibility to care for the marginalized—contributed a great deal to the passing of the AHCA. So did the appalling idea that people who, in the words of Representative Mo Brooks, “lead good lives” don’t get health issues. I wrote an entire blog post about “leading good lives” here, so I won’t cover that any more now, but it’s important to address the role Christianity has played in the passing of what, by my assessment, is a very unchristian bill. To see Christianity so entwined with a bill that will harm so many tarnishes the very name of Christ. And for that reason, more than any other, the AHCA outrages me.