Christian views on healthcare

Health is central to our well-being, vital to relationships, and helps us live out our vocations in family, work, and community. Caring for one’s own health is a matter of human necessity and good stewardship. Caring for the health of others expresses both love for our neighbor and responsibility for a just society. As a personal and social responsibility, health care is a shared endeavor

Fear and self-interest defeat social justice in the political processes of health care reform. The stress on individuals and families because of society's inability to fashion an adequate health care system makes action increasingly urgent. The breadth and complexity of the challenges require serious conversations and bold strategies to establish the shared personal and social responsibilities that make good health possible.

The health of each individual depends on the care of others and the commitment of society to provide health care for all.Health care is a shared endeavor. Just as each person’s health relies on others, health care depends on our caring for others and ourselves.

Regardless of the means used to provide health care and ensure access to it, we must diligently preserve the nature of health care as a shared endeavor. This means that we recognize our mutual responsibilities and guard against the ways in which motivation to maximize profit and to market health care like a commodity jeopardizes health and the quality of health care for all.

Our search for justice is a call from God, a concern especially for the "rights of the needy" (Jeremiah 5:28). Because health is central to personal well-being and functioning in society, a just society is one that supports the health of all its members. Thus, our common effort to provide access to health care for all is a matter of social justice for all people. Justice requires giving to each person his or her due.

Health care is the kind of good most appropriately given on the basis of need. Too often, however, health care is distributed on the basis of merit, social worth or contribution, marketplace value, or ability to pay.

Achieving these obligations of love and justice requires sacrifice, goodwill, fairness, and an abiding commitment to place personal and social responsibilities of love and justice above narrower individual, institutional, and political self-interests. For some people, this may mean paying more in taxes or in direct payments to assure that everyone has care. As difficult as this may be, citizens should not shrink from these moral challenges. We urge all people to advocate for access to basic health care for all and to participate vigorously and responsibly in the public discussion on how best to fulfill this obligation.

The chronic failure of our society to provide its members access to basic health care services is a moral tragedy that should not be tolerated. Alongside the pursuit of justice, we in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America recognize the biblical obligation that each person in society is responsible for the neighbor.People should ask not only whether they are being served as individuals, but also whether anyone is being left behind in the ongoing advance of medical progress.

full social statement at: http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements/Health-and-Healthcare.aspx