Monday, December 31, 2012

2012: A Look Back | National Catholic Reporter

2012: A Look Back | National Catholic Reporter by MSW.  MGB: The election did matter, because the GOP gerrymandered its way into enough seats to keep a finger on the scale in the House.  The election that mattered was 2010 at the state level.

The Affordable Care Act is still not settled, even if it is constitutional, since it may very well be that health insurance investors are more risk averse than the uninsured (or the subsidies are inadequate to buy insurance).  If either is the case, the whole private insurance market could blow up, resulting in either a single-payer system or a public option combined with repeal of some parts of the ACA.

The HHS mandate is really not a new thing, a fact that is lost on our host.  For people who hold third party insurance, it has been mandated since December 2000 that all policies include contraception.  The only change is the fact that some Churches can now opt out (they could not before).  While the President and Valerie Jarrett can be faulted for picking this fight, the Bishops were willing combatants.  Both sides used this controversy to shamelessly excite their bases.

I suspect most Catholics have not read the documents of Vatican II or the latest Catechism.  I suspect both are best examined in a classroom setting with a teacher rather than as an independent study.

As for libertarianism, it need not be insidious.  Indeed, school choice is a libertarian proposal, as is my proposal for Catholic Health hospitals to take over the treatment and corrections of non-violent drug offenders and to administer paid adult education as a replacement for the disastrous welfare reform carried out in the 90s. That could actually be the promise of the new century.

No comments:

Post a Comment