To the editor:
I am a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. My wife was a practicing physician, and I am also an M.D., and practiced orthopedic surgery for more than 30 years. After she died, I entered the seminary and was ordained a priest in 1998.
So, I speak to you as both a priest and a physician when I say that we in Maine must accept the federal funding that has been set aside to provide health insurance for approximately 70,000 low-income people. These people are our neighbors, our friends, our fellow Americans.
We all are created in God’s image. We all — each of us — possess a basic human dignity. Catholic tradition affirms that health care is a basic right flowing from this sanctity and dignity of human life. Millions of Americans continue to go without coverage for health care. More than 48 million people do not have health insurance.
For low-income people, high premiums and out of pocket expenses can keep them from obtaining coverage or seeing a doctor when they should. It was common for me as a physician to see patients who waited too long to come for medical care, and even delayed bringing their children until they were desperately ill. They were terrified at how much medical care would cost.
Catholic teaching is that health care is a basic right, and there should be adequate and affordable health care for all, for all. Far too many hard-working Maine people go without access to quality affordable health care and as a result suffer unnecessarily. Maine has a truly once in a lifetime opportunity to answer this unmet need for 70,000 Mainers and to accept the federal funding which is available under the Affordable Care Act.
Just last month in a morning homily, our new Holy Father Pope Francis reminded us that Christian love isn’t some dreamy soap-opera romance & illusion, it is concretely caring, healing, helping others. Passage of LD 1578 would be a prime example of that Christian love.
Fr. Richard Senghas, MD
Portland
