On Thursday, Pope Francis stressed that healthcare inequality in rich countries should not be done because it is the government's duty to ensure the common good of all its citizens.
In his speech before the European members of the World Medical Association, "Increasingly sophisticated and costly treatments are available to ever more limited and priviledge segments of the population."
He adds, "This raises questions about the sustainability of healthcare delivery and about what might be called a systemic tendency toward growing inequality in healthcare."
The pope also cites the difference between the healthcare coverage of both rich and poor countries to prove his point, citing that the inequality between countries can be seen in wealtheir countries, "where access to healthcare risks being more dependent on individuals' economic resources than on their actual need for treatment."
The pope did not specify any country. However, healthcare is currently a notable topic in the United States after President Donald Trump vowed to get rid of his predecessor's Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. The act aims to provide decent healthcare for low-income households.
He said healthcare legislation needed a "broad vision and a comprehensive view of what most effectively promotes the common good in each concrete situation."
The Pope also spoke about end-of-life issues, reaffirming the Catholic Church's stance that it is morally acceptable for a patient or a family to suspend or reject "disproportionate measures" to keep a terminally ill patient alive; however, he did stress that it was "different from euthanasia, which is always wrong, in that the intent of euthanasia is to end life and cause death."
He also adds that governments had a duty "to protect all those involved, defending the fundamental equality whereby everyone is recognized under law as a human being living with others in society."
