Local News
Letter to the Editor
Published: August 20, 2009
To the Editor:
With great interest I read the article titled “Catholics Asked To Scrutinize Health Care Proposals” (The Georgia Bulletin, Aug. 6) to see if I can finally learn more about the different bills being proposed by the legislators. Unfortunately, the town hall meetings have become shouting matches in which no one is allowed to speak and no one is really listening; thus, nothing is learned from these meetings about the health care proposals being discussed.
It was my hope that as Catholics, as Christians, we would have rallied in support of a health care reform that will provide equal rights to most if not all Americans to health care. Don’t we promote respect for human life from conception to death, not just during pregnancy? What do you tell the mother that is afraid of sending her child to school because she does not have money for the child’s asthma medicine? What do you tell the family that loses all of their possessions because the mother has cancer and their insurance does not cover the treatment? We all know people that are going through these painful choices, yet we do not seem to overcome partisan politics and analyze the proposed bills from the point of view of “what would Jesus do?”
My hope is that we stop yelling and start listening, reading, getting informed, before we decide to vilify a plan (or plans) that potentially could get us closer to providing fair health care to all Americans.
Maria Torres-Villa, Lawrenceville
Editor’s Note: The U.S. bishops have set up a Web page at www.usccb.org/healthcare/ that explains the bishops’ overall supportive position on health care reform but that also explains and provides action alerts about the provisions opposed by the bishops: for example, provisions that would establish federal funding of abortion.
