It’s that time of year again in the United States — when we have the “privilege” of wading through pages and pages of willfully obfuscating jargon and very bad prose in order to: a) obtain access to health care in this country, and b) avoid facing bankruptcy on account of grossly inflated health care expenses. It’s a deep, dark jungle.
It is well worth reminding ourselves that the U.S. is the only — repeat, only — industrialized, “First World” country that does not have universal health care for all. In fact, many developing countries with way smaller populations and economies already have universal health care for all. The U.S. is unique, and uniquely cruel, in this regard.
Our country is also uniquely stupid because we are spending per capita almost double (yes, double) the cost for health care than do all the following countries: Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, France, Ireland, Canada, Germany, Sweden, etc., etc. (The Commonwealth Fund report, 19 Sept. 2025). And, when contrasted to other comparable countries, the U.S. health care performance comes in dead last (Forbes, 3 Oct. 2024). We are paying twice as much as most other countries, and we have the worst performing health care system. That’s stupid. We have an overly complicated system crammed with useless middlemen, jacking up the cost at every turn.
Why is this happening? Simple: We in the U.S. do not consider health care to be a human right, and we have allowed (actually encouraged) for-profit hospitals, clinics, drug companies and health insurance companies to pollute and profiteer off a system that ought to be far removed from the for-profit business model — with weak and ineffectual oversight. Our system doesn’t make sense.
Let’s look back into European history. The ancient Romans had no hospitals, only places to patch up their wounded soldiers, period. Public hospitals did not exist until the Roman Empire allowed the arrival of Christianity to reform its culture. St. Basil of Caesarea (330-379) built the first Christian hospital and staffed it with members of his monastery and volunteers. Immediately thereafter, hospitals began to spring up throughout the empire, all of them founded and run by monasteries and convents of the Catholic Church. (You can’t keep a good idea down.) Two church-run public hospitals were founded in France in the 600s in Lyon and Paris, and many, many more in the following centuries in many locations.
History shows us that the very idea of a hospital began as an “act of charity” and they were operated for 1,000 years by the Church, not as for-profit business enterprises. The first non-religious hospitals did not come onto the scene until the 1700s; however, they were also run as charities and not as regular “businesses.”
The takeaway from this ever-so-brief looking back is to notice that, from the very beginning, hospitals were run to provide care for all, regardless of ability to pay. For goodness’ sake, even a 5-year-old can realize there is something not right about obtaining a profit from other people’s sickness and suffering. But America’s long-lasting, fervent love affair with unbridled capitalism has clouded our country’s vision in this regard. We have also allowed the AMA, health insurers, hospitals, and drug companies to lobby Congress far too much — creating politicians too beholden to these corporations’ political contributions. Remember, we are the only country that has gone down this dangerous road — and all this lobbying adds further costs into our hungry, heartless, health care behemoth.
To this very day, the Catholic Church is the largest operator of nonprofit hospitals and clinics worldwide. It runs 18,000 clinics, 15,000 homes for the elderly, and 5,500 hospitals — 65% of them in developing countries where poverty and access to health care is a serious issue. This amounts to 26% of the world’s health care facilities. (I myself have had two open-heart surgeries at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany, New York, which was founded 150 years ago by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy and the Daughters of Charity.) Obviously, the Church makes no profit from all these facilities — that has never been the objective.
And yet, we in the U.S. have been hoodwinked into thinking the pursuit of profit and delivery of health care fairly can go seamlessly together. What an absurd idea. For a competitive marketplace to function properly, the consumer needs to have the time and the knowledge to make objective, informed choices. When one is sick and in need of medical care, one is hardly in a position to think clearly, and very often there is no time to consider options and costs. One-half of the marketplace dialectic (the patient) is very severely handicapped — to use an unfortunate metaphor.
There are many, many problems that start piling up when the foundations of our Western society are allowed to crumble. One of those foundations has to do with the relationship between Christianity and health care. Hospitals had their origins as charitable institutions. “Charitable” is a word that has its root in the Latin word “caritas,” which has been a crucial and all-important term in Christian teaching for 2,000 years. “Deus caritas est,” God is charity/love. Charity/caritas is the love of God and (in imitation of Christ’s love) the love we must show to all our fellow humans. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that “the greatest of all virtues is caritas.”
Caritas is the very heart of Christianity, perhaps especially as put forth in Catholic social teaching, but central in many Christian denominations. However, unfortunately, we now have in the U.S. a movement among the Christian right that “empathy is a sin.” Recently, Professor Joe Rigney published an entire book titled “The Sin of Empathy” (Canon Press, 2025) — very troubling indeed.
Far too much of the Christian right movement, which is so tied up with MAGA and Trump, is formulated on us versus them, the elect vs. the non-elect, the saved vs. the unsaved, the born-again vs. the non-born-again, the English speakers vs. the Spanish speakers. All this when the teachings of the rabbi Jesus and St. Paul was/is so clear that we must embrace everyone with caritas: master and slave, male and female, Greco-Roman and Jew, et al.
The command to care for the unfortunate, the poor and the sick is crystal clear in the New Testament. We are living in a country that is majority Christian. How on Earth can we be living in the richest country on Earth and still not have health care for all? It is the absolute zenith of hypocrisy. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
And don’t think we are not being punished. We are. Precisely because we do not have a national nonprofit health care for all systems, our health care costs have spiraled totally out of control. We need to jettison this pernicious and predatory system, which exists to make health insurance and drug companies rich, and start over. We need to start over from the perspective of Christian charity and putting people first. And all, I do mean all, of the middlemen have to be cut out — there should be no need to waste all that money.
Here in New England, one of our oldest states, Massachusetts, was founded as (and still is technically) a “commonweal,” which means “general welfare.” The cornerstone of the function of the state (or nation) is to provide for the welfare of its people. Most assuredly, this has to mean universal access to health care — without a doubt.
As explained in Matthew 25:36-40, “Because I was sick and you looked after me. … Truly, I say to you, as you did it for one of the least of my brothers, you did it for me.” This is our sacred Christian duty. It is the Golden Rule as stated by Jesus in Luke 6:31: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s simple.
John Nassivera is a former professor who retains affiliation with Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. He lives in Vermont and part time in Mexico.