Excerpt
The following is from the Aug. 1, 2009, edition of Texas Faith column of The Dallas Morning News. William B. Lawrence, dean and professor of American Church History in SMU's Perkins School of Theology, provided expertise for this story.
August 3, 2009
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.
Read the full story.
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