Ethicist sees mounting challenges to Catholic values in health care

Published: 2007-03-05

CHICAGO (CNS) -- The question about Catholic health care is not so much whether the church should do it as how the church can do it, according to the final speaker at a conference on "Catholic Health Care Ethics: the Tradition and Contemporary Culture." Michael Panicola, vice president for ethics at SSM Health Care in St. Louis, spent much of his talk on the challenges to Catholic health care discussing the myriad issues that make it difficult for institutions to provide health care in accord with Catholic values in contemporary American society. His comments came at the end of a three-day conference sponsored by the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and the Catholic Health Association of the United States, in conjunction with the Chicago Medical Society. Challenges include working in a "morally diverse" society where even many Catholics do not understand church teachings, especially on the beginning and end of life; a growing anti-Catholic sentiment, in which Catholic health care institutions have been attacked by groups that support a right to abortion and state attorneys general; and an aging population that will require more care combined with a trend toward lower reimbursements for providing that care, Panicola said. Those issues combine with what Panicola described as a sense of mistrust between health care administrators and some bishops. In addition, there is tension between the Catholic value of the common good and the American emphasis on the individual, rising health care costs and the growing population of uninsured patients.

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