Fixing Health Care Requires Solidarity, Not Socialism
“The answer to the health care conundrum is not be found in Congress or in the White House, or in any draconian center of usurped power,” says Joseph Pearce, “it is to be found on our own doorstep, in our own homes and in the homes of our neighbors”:
Put simply, the principle of subsidiarity rests on the assumption that the rights of small communities—e.g., families, neighborhoods, private associations, small businesses—should not be violated by the intervention of larger communities—e.g., the state or centralized bureaucracies. Thus, for instance, in practical terms, the rights of parents to educate their children without the imposition by the state of “politically correct” school curricula would be enshrined by the principle of subsidiarity. Parental influence in schools is subsidiarist; state influence is anti-subsidiarist. In terms of health care provision, it seems inescapable that a one-size-fits-all health care system, imposed by an oversized and overzealous central government and administered by an oversized and therefore inevitably inefficient bureaucracy, is a gross violation of the principle of subsidiarity. In short, ObamaCare, or any reincarnation of it in another guise, is unjust because of its riding roughshod over the justice inherent in subsidiarity.
Click here to read the rest of his commentary. {eoa}
Joe Carter is a senior editor at the Acton Institute.
This article was originally published at Acton.org. Used with permission.
