If you like your health care plan

John Hunt contends that the only way to comply with ObamaCare is to deny your faith . . .

John Hunt

Not a day goes by that I don’t thank Our Lord and his Blessed Mother for the gift of being a U.S. citizen. The freedoms we enjoy and the abundance we have been blessed with are gifts that cost our forebears much blood and treasure.

Most of our ancestors arrived on our shores in search of the freedoms we often take for granted — the freedom to worship as we choose, to pursue our dreams, to live where we choose, and to aspire to a life that provides the very best for our children and grandchildren. Those blessings include the availability of quality health care that is incomprehensible to those who have gone before us — and is unmatched in any other country on earth.

The beauty of the recently enacted Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is that — as President Obama has stated on numerous occasions — “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” The freedom inherent in the president’s promise is certainly consistent with the freedoms Americans have enjoyed since our country’s founding.

For Catholics, however, the President’s promise requires a bit more analysis. Consider this: “If you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan as long as you would deny the truths of our faith, that all life is sacred and worthy of protection from conception to natural death.”

Or consider the Catholic physician who is obligated under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to perform abortions and provide contraceptive and abortifacient services to his patients despite his/her Catholic beliefs. Or consider a Catholic hospital, forced by law to provide abortion-related services for its patients, contrary to Church teaching.

Or consider the position of the Catholic employer who, under the ACA’s Health and Human Services mandate, is required by force of law to provide contraceptive and abortifacient services in the company’s group health plan.

When one considers the unwarranted and unconstitutional intrusion into the lives of Catholics that the ACA imposes (the basis of Legatus’ current lawsuit against the U.S. government), when combined with governmental mandates imposed on Catholic adoption agencies to place children with gay “families,” it is clear that the Catholic Church is under attack in our country.

So, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” so long as you are willing to deny your Catholic faith in the process. Thank you, Mr. President!

JOHN HUNT is Legatus’ executive director. He and his wife Kathie are charter members of Legatus’ Chicago Chapter.