Is health care a moral issue?
William B. Lawrence, dean and professor of American Church History in SMU's Perkins School of Theology, talks about whether health care is a moral issue.
Texas Faith is a weekly discussion that poses questions about religion, politics and culture to a panel of religious leaders. This week's question is:
Is health care a moral issue? If so, doesn't that mean we must do whatever is necessary so that everybody has health care?
Here are excerpts from some of this week's answers:
William Lawrence, dean and professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University: Providing access to adequate health care is a moral obligation of every society.
The mechanism that a society chooses to fulfill this moral obligation – from a single-payer, tax-based system with coverage for all, to some private-payer market-based system that finds a way to cover all – can vary.
It is a moral obligation to provide health care, not on the basis of social or economic class, but on the basis of human dignity.
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