Secularization in Western counties is not a phenomenon that necessarily brings about more tolerance or one that is marked by religious neutrality. Instead, when we forget God, we lose the ability to recognize his image in ourselves and in others.
In few places is it more important to have a respect for the dignity of the human person created in the image and likeness of God than in the delivery of health care.
And as recent events make clear, the interaction by many with the health care system, dominated as it is by private insurance companies, showcases the evangelical opportunity offered to Catholic health care providers and ministries as a place of encounter with the Divine Physician, Jesus Christ.
That respect for the dignity of each person irrespective of status is on the wane was reinforced by the jubilant response by some to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Sadly, his alleged killer is still being lauded as a folk hero.
It is undeniable, however, that the murder is celebrated in part because of widespread dissatisfaction with health care delivery.
In a recent poll, 7 out of 10 Americans said that Thompson’s profession, as well as the profits and claims denials of the insurance industry, had at least “some” role in his murder. Three out of 10 had personally experienced some problem with insurance companies denying claims or coverage.
Thompson’s murder and the ensuing discussion around health insurance had not even occurred when I recorded the first two of three episodes discussing health care on my new podcast, Catholic in America. But those conversations underscored the importance of the difference that the ministry of Catholic health care can make in confronting the depersonalization of health care delivery.
“Organism is algorithm,” says historian Yuval Noah Harari, summing up the views of many dystopian tech futurists, and medicine seems to be following that path. Data-obsessed care teams in an increasingly impersonal delivery model approach treatments as though they can do health care by algorithm, attacking indications of illness instead of seeing the whole person.
In her recent essay, “What is medicine for?” Dr. Kristin Collier describes how the goal of the medical profession should be nurturing the health and happiness of the whole human person, not just fixing the material stuff of which he or she is made. Evidence-based medicine has its place, but a purely technocratic approach that focuses only on health to the body is not adequate.
According to Collier, medicine involves seeing the well-being of the person more holistically, including fostering their happiness through virtue and relationships. The happiness of patients requires that medical professionals cultivate wisdom to meet the full spectrum of a patient’s needs, not just be learned in a reductionist or empiricist view of science that focuses on limiting physical suffering.
Collier, who teaches and practices at the University of Michigan Medical School, believes that seeing and treating each person as bearing the image of God will properly ground the practice of medicine in the dignity of the human person. It will avoid a person being treated as a machine, or having his or her well-being be dependent on the provider’s subjective sense of the person’s quality of life.
When health care professionals approach their vocation as Collier describes and see the whole person in his or her God-given dignity, it can foster an encounter with the Divine Physician. So says Louis Brown, executive director of Christ Medicus, which seeks to defend the religious liberty of Catholic health care professionals so that they can operate according to their mission.
Brown believes that the ministry of Catholic health care is one of the principal ways in which people encounter Christ and his church. By fulfilling their healing mission, Catholic health care professionals and institutions heal not only the body, but also respond with the love and care sought by each soul. In experiencing that loving care, patients encounter Christ, and can then share that healing love with others.
Regarding more humanizing alternatives to health insurance, Brown also directs the Curo Foundation, which, though not for everyone, provides families with the opportunity to live outside the traditional health insurance framework and share their health care costs with others in a network of solidarity.
In our conversation, Brown described how initiatives such as Curo are entrepreneurial ways in which Catholics work to make good health care accessible and uphold medical practice that is consistent with what medicine is for and the dignity of the human person.
More Catholics stepping into and supporting Catholic health care professionals who are living the mission, as well as living in solidarity with others through health-sharing organizations, can be antidotes to the increasing depersonalization of health care. Responding accordingly will ensure that Catholic health care retains its evangelical witness into the future.
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