Whatever the fate of Obamacare, there is no escaping the fact that the great American health care debate is far from over. The debate has been at times so fierce that it has even spilled over into theology, where partisans on either side are armed with cudgels called, respectively, “subsidiarity” and “solidarity.” In recent weeks, we’ve even seen these two Catholic terms, unfamiliar to most Americans, applied to support or to condemn Paul Ryan’s budget proposals for the entire country.
In broad outline, “Subsidiarists” are people who are fearful or hostile to the state provision of social welfare – preferring that charity be dispensed at lower levels of society: communities and families. “Solidarists,” by contrast, believe that society as a whole is often the best administrator of social welfare, and prefer that things such as health insurance be run by the state.
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