Interview Summary
Solidarity President Chris Faddis joins Bob Sansevere on The BS Show to discuss the difficult moral and ethical issues in healthcare Catholic hospital face in modern medical care especially in regards to neonatal needs.
Interview Audio
Interview Transcript
Bob Sansevere (00:00):
We are joined by Christopher Faddis, Co-founder and president of the nonprofit Healthcare Sharing Ministry Solidarity HealthShare, which is an ethical, affordable alternative to traditional health insurance and is faithful to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Chris, well, you know better than anyone because you co-founded Solidarity Healthshare, solidarityhealthshare.org. It’s I’m Catholic. A lot of people out there are Catholic and Catholic hospitals are not. It’s under fire too strong a word, but maybe it isn’t. PBS their website, pbs.org had a story just this week about Catholic hospitals, and more than half a million babies have delivered each year in Catholic run hospitals across the US. In most cases, there are no complications, but during an emergency, patients can find themselves caught between accepted medical standards and these facilities, religious based policies. Now, what they’re considering accepted medical standards is abortion, and it doesn’t matter wherever you fall on it.
(01:05):
I kind of think that if you are a Catholic, a Jewish, a Muslim, whatever, if you’re religious based, you should be able to set the parameters of what you will and won’t do. And people should know that going into that hospital. Now, the argument is a lot of these Catholic hospitals might be for people in rural areas. They might be the only hospital within an hour or so. However, I have a tough time if you have religious standards for them to be overridden by a federal or state mandate. And I just wanted to get your thoughts on where you are. They use an example of a woman who her water broke before accepted standards of when a baby would be viable and the Catholic hospital would not abort because there was still a heartbeat. But I mean, if the baby there was no heartbeat, I would guess they would have abortion would not probably be the term they use it.
Chris Faddis (02:04:
That wouldn’t be an abortion.
Bob Sansevere (02:06):
No, it wouldn’t be.
Chris Faddis (02:07):
Yeah. And that’s a really interesting one because, well, first of all, let’s just say this, the Catholic Hospital systems are serving, I think it’s 40 to 50% of the patients nationwide. And they are the number one hospitals to serve Medicaid patients and Medicare patients, many private hospital systems and for-profit hospital systems refuse Medicaid and Medicare and Catholic hospitals take them hands down above the rest, and they’re doing everything that’s necessary for medical care and offering most elective things. All we’re talking about is a few elective procedures that people want, that they’re not willing to do because of our Catholic beliefs. And they’re all things that are not. None of these things are lifesaving. But in the instance that you just referenced, of the woman who had a preterm, her water break is first of all, and I don’t know, I didn’t look at the number of weeks she was, but the reality is, every single day prenatal care gets better and better, and we have more opportunity to save babies pre viability.
(03:20):
So when you used to be the standard was 24 weeks. Now it’s, I think 22 or 23 weeks. But even that, even though the standard may be 22 or 23 weeks, we’re seeing babies that are even less each time. So used to be 24. Then what happens? You start hearing stories about babies who are at 23 weeks or 22 weeks and they survive. So the reality is that prenatal care and neonatal medicine is getting better and better, and that they’re able to keep the baby in as long as possible, do all these things, and then oftentimes able to keep the baby alive even if they were born pre viability. So to say that this Catholic hospital should have done something, the reality is that this baby either will die naturally or they will be able to keep it alive. Now, is it difficult for the mother?
(04:08):
Yes, but any trauma, medical trauma is difficult. What’s difficult, whether or not the Catholic hospital did that. And let’s remember that in most states, Bob, it’s not even legal to abort after 20 weeks. So the reality is that this is something that is not, there’s no reason for an abortion here. Medical care is sufficient. Yes, maybe the baby would’ve passed and then the hospital would’ve been able to do whatever was necessary to get the baby out, whether it’s a live birth, a deceased child, or even DNC and those procedures. So there’s plenty of great care. And the fact is, what we’ve actually seen in solidarity, and Dr. Oertle can speak to this, is often what’s happening instead is we have secular hospitals where, let’s say a baby is, this happens, a woman’s water breaks early and the baby’s coming. And we’ve had situations where the hospital’s refusing to give lifesaving care when the mother wants it, when it is possible to save the child. And so we’ve had times where even Dr. Oertle’s had to be involved in trying to transfer a mother and child to another hospital in order to make sure that the hospital would fight for the life of the child.
Bob Sansevere (05:24):
So a hospital, you’re talking about hospitals that wanted to force an abortion on someone who didn’t want?
Chris Faddis (05:28):
No, they didn’t want to fight for the viability of the baby. So the baby had either, I think this situation, the baby had actually come, but they weren’t going to fight for his life, and they weren’t going to essentially let him die. And we had to insist Dr. Oertle, sorry, I wasn’t involved, but Dr. Oertle and some other doctors got involved. They found another hospital, which of course was a Catholic hospital that was willing to fight for this child. And then that hospital finally changed course and worked to save the baby, and the baby survived. So the reality is not that half the hospitals are some sort of threat to these children, it’s actually the opposite where you have some of these secular hospitals who are refusing to fight for the viability of the child. And what the studies are showing is that the survivability of those babies, and I’m sorry I’m going long here, but this is such a passionate talk about, for me, the survivability of those children has more to do with how far the hospital will go to save their life than anything. The Catholic hospital’s not the issue here. It’s who’s going to fight for the life of the patient. That’s really what matters.
Bob Sansevere (06:32):
See, I don’t think that’s a bad thing to fight for the life of someone that wants, I mean, a parent wanted that child to live in the instance that you use. And by the way, Dr. Oertle is Dr. John Oertle, a co-founder along with you and Brad Hahn, and also your chief medical officer. And he’s also, he’s on with me once a month, and he is terrific. I’ll tell you what.
Chris Faddis (06:51):
Yeah, he’s very good.
Bob Sansevere (06:52):
The stuff that he, I’m on several more supplements, thanks to talking to him. So he knows this stuff, but Catholic hospitals, 16% of babies born in the US are born at Catholic hospitals because there are a high number of Catholic hospitals in the country. And this was a story that more than half a million babies or 16% are born in Catholic run hospitals. And this is something that was written by, it was reported from KFF Health News, which I had never heard of, but it sounds like that the reporter went in looking basically with a narrative preconceived.
Chris Faddis (07:38):
Yeah-
Bob Sansevere (07:39):
Absolutely. Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Chris Faddis (07:42):
Well, I’ll tell you some funny, I’m sorry to cut you off, but I’ll tell you something funny about this story particularly. But most of the ones you’ll see coming out, and I shared this with you out there, if you do a search for Catholic Healthcare right now, you’ll see pretty much every day for the last, I don’t know, month, I have an alert through Google that I get these searches every day. You’re seeing almost a similar headline. And what’s happening is , which is a healthcare foundation, which is funded by the same people who own Kaiser Health, which is a for-profit healthcare system out of Colorado. I think there’s some other states they might serve. They have put out the alarm bell saying, Hey, were you affected by Catholic hospitals in their ethical and religious directives? Were you harmed? Was your life threatened?
(08:32):
They’re putting out these bulletins to get people to tell these stories, and then they’re the ones producing all these stories and getting it out and giving it to PBS and all these other people. So there is a very perverse incentive here where a foundation, which by the way, is also against price transparency, and a lot of the things we stand for is out there actually pushing for Kaiser to actually, sorry, pushing for these stories to be out there. And then they’re publishing them through their foundation, which of course, they say has no relation, but it’s the same board of trustees and it’s all in bed together. So we’re seeing a coordinated effort against ethical healthcare like you and I have talked about before, and it’s on the front lines now because of abortion. They’ve made it really out there, and they’re going after it.
Bob Sansevere (09:20):
Well, interestingly, you mentioned Kaiser and KFF is the news organization. Yep. So, okay. That fills in some blanks there.
Chris Faddis (09:29):
No question, doesn’t it? It’s kind of a fun little exercise. They recently did a hit piece on another health share where they completely misrepresented the member’s statement about what happened and made it look like this health share had ruined his life. So they’re driving these stories intentionally and people like CBS and are jumping on PBS and all that are following it.
Bob Sansevere (09:50):
Yeah. Well, what it gave us is an opportunity to talk about it, so I appreciate that from their part. Yeah. Chris, thank you, Chris Faddis. He is the president and co-founder of Solidarity HealthShare solidarityhealthshare.org. If you’re looking for a great alternative to traditional healthcare, check it out, Chris. Thank you.
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