An update on Caritas-Centene

From White Coat Notes, the Boston Globe's medical blog:

State regulators today voted to accept a controversial bid by a Massachusetts Catholic hospital chain and a secular health organization to provide health insurance to low income residents.

... The vote came after Caritas-Centene assured the panel that women will have "ready access" to timely family planning services, with no primary care physician referral required. They also promised creation of a toll-free 800 customer service number that will provide women information about where they can get family planning and reproductive services -- and, in an emergency, will provide transporation to the nearest approriate facility.

Board officials promised close monitoring to make sure the promises are kept.

Full backstory posted this morning. Cardinal Sean explains himself on his blog (I love saying that):

There has been a significant amount of public dialogue concerning my statement yesterday (as copied below) about the proposed arrangement involving Caritas Christi Health Care with the Commonwealth Care Program.

To be perfectly clear, Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching and anyone who suggests otherwise is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church. We are committed to the Gospel of Life and no arrangement will be entered into unless it is completely in accord with Church teaching.

Recognizing the complexity of the proposed arrangement, I will ask the National Catholic Bioethics Center to review the arrangement and to provide me their opinion.

There's, well, plenty of comments.

LifeNews adds an action item:

Contact Caritas Christi and urge it not to begin doing abortions or referring for them:

Caritas Christi Health Care,
736 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA 02135, (phone) 617-789-2500, CCR.Webmaster@CaritasChristi.org

update: Catholic Culture adds:

However, the cardinal's claim was contradicted by representatives of Commonwealth Care, who assured state officials that their program would provide "ready access" to all of the services mandated by the government program, including abortion.

Under the Commonwealth Care system, abortions will not be performed at the Caritas Christi hospitals. But women who wish to procure abortions will be given a telephone number to call for information on where abortions are performed, and, if necessary, transportation to those sites.

What is Caritas Christi up to?

This story has been simmering for awhile but I only just now had a chance to do a treatment.

AmP reader Jeanne gives us a fantastic opening brief:

Caritas Christi Health Network (which owns the remaining Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts) wants to partner with Centene Corp. - a St. Louis based health network - to put a bid in for government subsidized healthcare. Ostensibly, this is for the sake of allowing lower-income people greater access to healthcare.

The catch is that if the venture were to accept government money, then they would be required by Massachusetts state law to cover abortions. (In the words of Connector Authority spokesman Dick Powers: "Health plans must provide covered services. Covered services specifically include abortion services.") On March 5, 2009, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley released a statement, saying that, "...Caritas Christi Health Care has assured me that it will not be engaged in any procedures nor draw any benefits from any relationship which violate the Church's moral teaching as found in the Ethical and Religious Directives." And while it is true that Caritas Christi Health Care does not plan to directly offer any of the so-called "family planning services" that would be mandated by the state, they are planning on providing referrals for such services. The plan is this: Caritas would refer the patient to another facility, knowing that said facility would then direct her to physicians who will perform abortions, prescribe contraception, and so forth.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, lot of people believe that the Cardinal is being intellectually dishonest in how he is presenting the situation and that the partnership would amount to the Catholic hospital system cooperating with a provider of abortion services. In the face of public outrage over this partnership, the Cardinal is submitting the situation to the National Catholic Bioethics Center. It will be interesting to hear their opinion of this situation.

The Catholic Action League has been very vocal on this issue, saying in their most recent press release that Caritas Christi is "stonewalling".

Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe did an in-depth story on March 4th, and had a symposium of moral theologians weigh-in yesterday. Together they've compiled a tome of contributions.

Sadly, however, from my brief survey of the names chosen, there appear to be many theologians who don't think with the mind of the Church on this complex issue.

Update: "Archdiocese of Boston responds to attempted ordination of three women"

Blogged earlier, the AofB responds:

The Archdiocese of Boston has issued a statement in response to a group that planned and performed an ordination ceremony for three women in Boston on Sunday. In the July 18 statement the archdiocese’s vicar general, Father Richard Erikson, explained Catholic teaching on the male-only priesthood and said the group, which calls itself Roman Catholic Womenpriests, is “not an entity of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Roman Catholic Womenpriests held an alleged ordination ceremony of three women at a Boston-area Presbyterian church. (CNA)

No word about any sort of penalty being brought against these women. Has anyone heard different?