Church worries eased as Trump’s health bill fails

The Republican-led Congress has pulled a proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the health-care overhaul that was President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, writes Michael Sean Winters. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan decided not to put the measure to a vote when it became clear the most conservative Republican members would not support the legislation.

The US bishops had said the proposal contained “serious flaws”, specifically in regard to proposed cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to the indigent: 24 million poor people were projected to lose their insurance. The bishops had opposed the ACA because they thought it did not sufficiently bar abortion funding, but they never called for its repeal. They did not take an official stance on the recent proposal.

The bishops’ news agency, the Catholic News Service, also distributed a video in advance of the vote featuring Sr Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association. “This bill is catastrophic for Catholic Social Teaching and particularly for the people that we are called to serve,” Sr Keehan said. She also criticised the provision that would have given $15 billion (£12bn) in tax breaks to people earning more than $1 million per year.