“We will advocate for addressing the current problems in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” they resolved, “as well as others that may become apparent in the course of its implementation.”
The Catholic Health Association, a private trade association of hospitals which came out in favor of the Affordable Care Act over the bishops' objections in 2010, issued a statement of its own on the same day as the U.S. bishops.
That statement, which opposed any attempt to repeal the law, did not address what the bishops called “serious moral problems” with its proposals or omissions.
Instead, while acknowledging that “no one piece of legislation is perfect,” Catholic Health Association President Sr. Carol Keehan stated that “many of the (bill's) provisions … are essential and should remain in law,” as a means to the Church's goal of expanding access to health care.
Coming down on the other side of the repeal question, the National Right to Life Committee also wrote to Congress, earlier in the month.
The committee favored an outright reversal of the health care overhaul, rather than the specific changes that the U.S. bishops recommended, as a means of preventing the government from funding abortion within the category of health care.
In its analysis of the Affordable Care Act, the National Right to Life Committee drew attention to the same avenues for abortion funding that the bishops want to be closed off through subsequent legislation.
The committee also alleged that other parts of the act could result in government rationing of critical care and lead to the promotion of euthanasia. Consequently, the committee's directors held that “the law is so riddled with provisions that violate right-to-life principles that it cannot simply be patched” through the kind of surgical revisions suggested by the bishops.
The U.S. bishops, for their part, have given no indication that they see the promotion of euthanasia as a possible effect of the law. Richard Doerflinger, Associate Director for Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. bishops' conference, told CNA/EWTN News on Jan. 5 that critics of health care reform were unrealistically exaggerating the prospect of government “death panels.”