Explaining a paradox: Church and health policy in the 1940s and 1970s

In the mid-twentieth century many doctors, supported by private hospitals and conservative politicians, argued that health care should be underwritten by voluntary health insurance. Where this was not possible access should be supported by charity. Based on the premise that health care was a right, not a matter of charity, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) argued for collective responsibility either in the form of cash benefits or direct public provision. Catholics, however, favoured a path advocated in Catholic social teaching, i.e. corporatism – a set of arrangements, which requires the state to work through existing social groups. Consequently they argued for a system of social support based upon the family as the first provider, assisted by intermediate organisations, and only then the state, a relationship predicated upon the principle of subsidiarity.