Christian Arguments Against Universal Health Care

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Forget the debate over President Obama's health care plan for a moment and ask yourself a more general question: Should we have universal health care of some sort? That is, should every American be able to count on receiving health care regardless of ability to pay? In this post, I'd like to share a negative response to these questions I have heard from a couple of people I know who identify themselves as devout Christians and reside in Mississippi.

There may be other arguments against the general idea of universal health care, but the one I have heard from a couple of independent sources can be boiled down to this:

Providing health care to all Americans, regardless of their ability to pay, is immoral for at least two reasons. First, it undermines the work ethic of those who receive the health care without paying for it. When they are given something without having to work for it, you are essentially removing an important motivator for them to work, promoting laziness and making them more dependent on big government. Second, any universal health care system we can imagine is going to take from the wealthy to cover the cost of the poor. The wealthy are wealthy because they are favored by the Christian god, and the poor are poor because they are lazy and have not applied themselves. While the Christian god still loves the poor, it would be wrong to punish the wealthy in this way. The poor must earn their own favor.

This was a paraphrase from a couple of conversations and not a direct quote that can be attributed to any one individual. Of course, it should not be surprising that one's interpretation of the Christian god is far more revealing about oneself than about any sort of external god. Still, when I hear this sort of rationale, I cannot help being reminded of the very same "social Darwinism" of which Christians are so fond of throwing at atheists.

How is this conception of the wealthy being wealthy because they deserve wealth and the poor being poor because they deserve poverty not an extreme form of social Darwinism? And given the way some Christian approach illness, how much of a stretch is involved in saying that someone with an illness probably deserves his or her illness?

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Tags: Christian, universal health care, health care, Obama, Mississippi, social Darwinism