Hispanic Evangelicals Support Obamacare

In the category of more bad news for the GOP which already has a horrendous problem with Hispanic voters who rightly see the GOP as their enemy, now Hispanic evangelicals are supporting  the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a, Obamacare.  Pastors rightly see that Obamacare can mean health care coverage as opposed to nothing and, unlike the white supremacists in the Tea Party/Christofascist base of the GOP, are not hoping their parishioners will simply vanish or die off. Politico has details:

Under the big evangelical tent where tens of millions of Americans worship, Hispanic churches are embracing Obamacare despite the concerns about religious freedom that have tarnished the law for many of their fellow believers.

Pastors have encouraged support since enrollment for health coverage began in October. Their take is that the law’s positives outweigh its negatives, especially for the one in three Hispanics without insurance, the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group. Many of the uninsured are eligible for major new health benefits plus subsidies to help them afford coverage.

On the eve of the first sign-up deadline Monday, church leaders are still working hard to get out the word about how much the Hispanic community will gain. Some draw parallels between the suffering the law is intended to ameliorate and the church’s core mission.

Jesus was a healer,” noted Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. “The health care law can be improved, but I think in its present form it does more good than harm to Latinos around the country.”

[The]embrace of the health law puts Hispanic evangelicals at odds with other evangelicals as well as religious conservatives across denominations. They have opposed Obamacare primarily because of its provision requiring businesses to cover contraceptives in employee health plans, including the morning-after pill.

Although the contraceptive requirement may cause many evangelical Hispanics discomfort, they seem to have made their peace. “Our commitment has always been to strike a balance between religious liberty and individual liberty,” Salguero said.  In doing so, they’ve aligned with the mainline congregations that have been at the center of most of the Obama administration’s faith outreach.

The law is “a start,” said Abraham Hernandez, northeast vice president for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. He believes Obamacare’s expanded benefits will advance a key conference principle. “If Hispanics in the nation can have access to health care, it indeed preserves life. We believe that access to health care is very critical,” he said.

The divergence from other evangelicals is stark.  But then again, it is important to remember that many far right evangelicals are self-centered, seek to inflict their religious beliefs on all Americans and frankly do not give a damn about blacks, Hispanics or other minorities who they see as interlopers who do not belong in America,