Health care:
Expanding options for uninsured Wisconsin kids

		Eye on the  Capitol  Kathy Markeland

This is "back to school" time for many Wisconsin families. At school registrations across the state, parents are gathering school supply lists and filling out forms that ask questions like "bus or walk? Emergency contact information? Hot lunch or cold? . . . Health insurance?"

Unfortunately, when it comes to health insurance for too many families in our state the answer is "none."

Wrong direction

Wisconsin has historically done a good job of providing health care coverage through strong employer-based programs and relatively generous public benefit plans. But new data from the Department of Health and Family Services (DHFS) suggests that we are headed in the wrong direction.

Between 2003 and 2004 the number of uninsured children in Wisconsin jumped from 85,000 to 91,000 - a six percent increase in the number of uninsured children in just a year. Children in "near poor" families were the most likely to lack coverage.

Meanwhile, the rate of employer-sponsored health insurance is dropping. The percentage of employers offering coverage has dropped significantly since 2001, going from 77 percent of employers down to 69 percent in 2004. Employees that still have coverage have seen out-of-pocket health care costs rising faster than their wages.

BadgerCare Plus

In a series of town hall meetings around the state, DHFS has recently been touting a plan, dubbed BadgerCare Plus, that could help reverse this trend and move Wisconsin toward health care coverage for all children.

BadgerCare Plus would expand upon the success of the state's BadgerCare program, which launched in 1999 as a federal "waiver" program. Increasingly, the federal government has allowed states under such "waivers" to take federal funds and tailor state health care programs to meet local needs.

BadgerCare Plus proposes to increase access to state health care programs already covering hundreds of thousands of state residents and to fund those expansions by reducing inefficiencies in the current public benefits programs and allowing individuals to "buy into" the plan.

Currently the state operates a number of federally assisted health care programs for families in poverty and pregnant women. However, beneficiaries cannot transition easily from one program to another.

Under BadgerCare Plus, the programs would become virtually seamless, allowing families to move between the various programs as income levels grow or shrink. In addition, low-income families that currently exceed the income thresholds would be able to "buy into" the plans, if they do not have affordable health care offered by their employer.

Basic human right

As a church that speaks of health care as "a basic human right, an essential safeguard of human life and dignity," we should welcome the well-intentioned efforts of policymakers to expand coverage. The U.S. bishops have emphasized that health care should not depend on where someone works, how much their parents earn, or where they live. Programs, like BadgerCare, have looked at the needs of families and by expanding family access, successfully covered more of Wisconsin's children.

BadgerCare Plus is not perfect. But it is a step that may move us closer to a time when every child in Wisconsin will walk through the door on that first day of school with all of the supplies that they need, including access to affordable, quality health care services.

Kathy Markeland is associate director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference in Madison.

Catholic Church: Willingness to take a stand

		A Culture  of Life  Kimberly Hahn

Editor's note: This column continues from Kimberly Hahn's previous columns. It discusses her and her husband's discovery of church teachings while they were in Protestant seminary, before becoming Catholic.

Scott and I were impressed that the Roman Catholic Church alone, with more than one billion members, took such a courageous (and, dare I say, biblical) stand against our culture in proclaiming the truth about openness to life.

We were impressed but not moved toward the Church at that time. Nevertheless, I believe that the seeds planted through studying this issue and living the truth opened our hearts years later to the fullness of the Christian faith in the Church.

The reasonableness of the Catholic position on openness to life and the Scriptures that supported it amazed us. Perhaps that was why Protestants unanimously affirmed the same view as the Catholic Church until 1930. What a revelation!

God's plan

Scores of Protestant church leaders and theologians since the Reformation can be quoted to demonstrate their strong convictions against the use of birth control. Did Protestants simply fail to eradicate the last vestiges of "Romanism" in the area of sexual ethics until 1930? Or did Protestants through the centuries affirm basic truths that must govern all Christian marriages, Catholic or otherwise, for each of us to reflect the vision of the life-giving love of the Trinity in our families?

After all, marriage is not a man-made institution. It is God's work according to God's plan. Fundamentally, this is not a Catholic-versus-Protestant issue but a Christian-versus-non-Christian issue. That is why so many more non-Catholics are returning to the once nearly universal Christian understanding of the power, beauty, and truth of living marital love God's way.

Serious consequences

In 1930, the Anglican's Lambeth Conference in England became the first official Christian body to approve use of contraception in the most severe cases. In response, a Jesuit, Fr. Daniel Lord, wrote the following analysis.

• Birth control destroys the difference between prostitutes and respectable women by eliminating the ideal of motherhood and substituting the ideal of personal pleasure and self-gratification.

• Birth control leads to infidelity by destroying self-restraint and self-discipline. For unmarried folk it banishes fear of consequences.

• Birth control prevents noble faculty by refusal to co-operate with God in creation of children and substitutes for it, pleasure.

• Birth control affects the future. Substituting self-gratification for children, [those using it] strike at the very source of human life.

Standing alone

Since 1930, every major Protestant denomination has relinquished its stand against contraception, and today most even allow abortion. There is a demonstrable connection between the contraceptive mentality promoted in the 1930s and the abortion and death industry mentality of the present day. The Catholic Church alone stands in continuity with Christian teaching throughout the centuries on the sanctity of the act of marriage.

Initially, to Scott and me, the Church's authority and magisterial teachings were nothing more than helpful input, since we had no interest in becoming Catholic. (In fact, Scott did not think that an intelligent Christian would remain in the Catholic Church!) However, the Church intrigued us with her willingness to take a stand obviously unpopular in today's culture and to proclaim it to the world, whether or not the world wanted to hear the message, simply because she believed it to be true.

The Scriptures, on the other hand, compelled us to take a second look at the prevailing Protestant acceptance of contraception. Could it be that most Protestant denominations had capitulated to our culture on abortion because they had first failed to understand why all Christians had affirmed what now only the Catholic Church was declaring on contraception?

Kimberly Hahn, mother of six, is co-author of the bestseller Roman, Sweet Home, Our Journey to Catholicism, with her husband Scott Hahn. This column is syndicated by www.OneMoreSoul.com and is reprinted from Kimberly Hahn's book, Life-Giving Love (St. Anthony Messenger Press).

Marriage: Why we need to amend state constitution

By Susanna Herro
DIRECTOR OF JUSTICE AND PASTORAL OUTREACH, DIOCESE OF MADISON

	This article is part of a series of articles exploring various aspects of marriage. The series is intended to provide information for Catholic citizens as they vote November 7 on a state Marriage Referendum. The referendum would amend the state constitution to provide that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin citizens are being asked about the meaning of marriage. With friends and family we have the opportunity and the obligation to express our Catholic beliefs on the profound depth of the importance of marriage to families and to culture.

There is a referendum on Election Day, November 7, that will ask each of us, as voters, to express what we hope for the future of marriage in Wisconsin.

Why amendment?

Of course, there are laws governing marriage in our state now. The current law defines marriage between a "husband and wife." This seems clear so why would we want to amend our constitution to say marriage is between a "man and a woman"?

It is because in states such as Massachusetts and Vermont, judges have redefined marriage without consulting the law-makers who are the elected representatives of the people.

Law-makers in Wisconsin are asking the people of Wisconsin to tell them, through the referendum process, what they believe marriage should be for our state. To answer that question, we must ask ourselves a few questions.

Benefits of marriage

Does marriage matter? Both the church and civil society recognize the benefits of marriage and have seen it as an essential social good.

Marriages have been promoted because they provide a more secure environment for the full development of the human person by providing stability in relationships and support in mutual endeavors.

Protecting marriage

So does it matter if marriage, as it has been lived and defined through millennia, is redefined by law? Or perhaps a better question is: should so substantial and vital an institution of marriage risk re-definition by judges?

The effect of voting "Yes" on November 7 for the Marriage Referendum is to protect the definition of marriage by placing that definition in the Constitution of Wisconsin. If marriage is defined in the constitution, that means any future changes would have to be at the will of the people, through a process involving elected legislators and extensive debate, not simply the decision of a judge.

Because of court decisions in other states, it is wise at this time to vote to protect our understanding of marriage.

Law: powerful teacher

The law is a powerful teacher. Our laws should reflect what we believe is best for society as a whole, not for any individual.

The Catholic Catechism and our faith express a belief about marriage that the rest of our culture finds absolutely astonishing - that marriage is a lifetime commitment between a man and a woman open to procreation.

The Church is not known for waffling when the winds of change buffet it. In an age where people speak lightly of "starter marriages" just like they speak of starter homes (the ones you enter into expecting to move on to better things), Catholics take marriage vows less lightly.

In summary, marriage is a vital institution whose definition is being challenged in other states and has been redefined in some. As members of the Catholic Church in Wisconsin, you have the opportunity to protect marriage from re-definition without debate by voting "Yes" to place the definition of marriage within the state Constitution.

Susanna Herro is director of the Office of Justice and Pastoral Outreach in the Diocese of Madison.