{"id":3649,"date":"2009-11-10T10:50:26","date_gmt":"2009-11-10T10:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/11\/health-care-legislation-is-about-human-beings.html"},"modified":"2009-11-10T10:50:26","modified_gmt":"2009-11-10T10:50:26","slug":"health-care-legislation-is-about-human-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/11\/health-care-legislation-is-about-human-beings.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Health care legislation is about human beings&#8230;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left\">&#8220;Health care legislation, with all its political, technical and economic aspects, is about human beings and hence has serious moral dimensions. Our focus is the concrete realities of families with children and their access to doctors, the poor and the elderly, those with limited means and those with few or even no means, such as the mother carrying a child in her womb. Our Catholic commitment to health care picks up the pieces of our failing system in our emergency rooms, clinics, parishes and communities. This is why we believe our nation&#8217;s health care system needs reform which protects human life and dignity and serves the poor and vulnerable as a moral imperative and an urgent national priority.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left\"><\/div>\n<p>We remain deeply concerned about the debate that now moves to the Senate, especially as it will affect the poor and vulnerable, and those at the beginning and end of life. We will continue to insist that health care reform legislation must protect conscience rights. We support measures to make health care more affordable for low-income people and the uninsured. We remain deeply concerned that immigrants be treated fairly and not lose the health care coverage that they now have. We will continue to raise our voices in public and in prayer; we ask our people to join us in making the moral case for genuine health care reform that protects the life, dignity, consciences and health of all.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: right\">&#8212; Cardinal Francis George, president of the USCCB, in&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/cnsblog.wordpress.com\/2009\/11\/09\/cardinal-george-statement-on-house-approved-health-care-bill\/\">a statement<\/a>&nbsp;on health care reform. <\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: right\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Health care legislation, with all its political, technical and economic aspects, is about human beings and hence has serious moral dimensions. Our focus is the concrete realities of families with children and their access to doctors, the poor and the elderly, those with limited means and those with few or even no means, such as&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Health care legislation is about human beings...&quot; - The Deacon&#039;s Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/11\/health-care-legislation-is-about-human-beings.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;Health care legislation is about human beings...&quot; - The Deacon&#039;s Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;Health care legislation, with all its political, technical and economic aspects, is about human beings and hence has serious moral dimensions. 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