Religion & Law

By increasing the government's sheer size and role in the provision of health care, does health care reform really violate Catholic teaching as a matter of principle?  Greg writes:

My opposition to the unwarranted emphasis on big government solutions in the 2010 health care legislation goes beyond prudential concerns about efficiency and cost to the public, although those factors obviously are important and contribute to the lack of economic viability for the plan . . . .  As a matter of principle, grounded in Catholic teaching about liberty, human dignity, and human thriving, I regard this plan as dangerously fostering dependency on government, as suppressing our liberties in making economic and health care choices independent of government guidelines, and as enhancing the power of government employee unions that convert government itself into a special interest contrary to the common good.

Greg is certainly not alone on this point.  More and more I seem to notice conservative Catholics advocating for small government as though it were a principle of Church teaching, rather than a prudential judgment regarding the policy measures that may or may not be most conducive to human flourishing under a particular set of circumstances.  I understand that the totalitarian state does violate Church teaching in principle, but that's not what we're talking about here.  It simply cannot be true that fostering reliance on the government when it comes to the provision of health care violates Church teaching as a matter of principle (or that supporting government employee unions does).  I have no problem with Catholics opposing the European welfare state (a state that was shaped in significant part by Catholics), but I've understood that opposition to be grounded in an empirical judgment that the European welfare state does not work very well, not that the European welfare state is contrary to Church teaching.  

As I've argued on MoJ before, I suspect that many (most?) of our opinions on these matters are shaped by our life experiences occupying a whole bunch of identities (we are "bundles of hyphens," to quote Laski) not just as the bearers of some purely distilled essence of a Catholic worldview. I'm not saying the health care debate regarding the role of government is prudential judgment all the way down, but it's close.