Catholic health share ministry urges Trump to make changes to US healthcare system
Leaders of a Catholic healthcare sharing ministry are urging President-elect Donald Trump to make changes to the healthcare system in the United States as part of an effort to "Make America Healthy Again."
Chris Faddis, president of the Catholic healthcare sharing ministry Solidarity Healthshare founded in 2016, wrote a letter to Trump Tuesday following his victory in the 2024 presidential election.
In the letter, Faddis and Solidarity Healthshare's Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Oertle outlined a series of steps they want the incoming administration to take.
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"Over the past four years, Americans have seen the cost of their healthcare rise exponentially under a health system and [a Food and Drug Administration] plagued by waste and inefficiency even as the quality of care has plummeted," they wrote. "In 2025, families on the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) plan are projected to pay an average of 13.5% more for their plans, the largest healthcare premium increase in more than a decade."
The Solidarity Healthshare leaders also expressed concern that "Studies also show that the United States is falling far behind other nations in its ability to provide essential medical care to patients who need it," attributing what they characterized as an inadequate healthcare system to "Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Hospital Systems' depersonalized, bureaucratic approach to treatment."
Insisting that the current healthcare system is "no longer serving patient needs," Faddis and Oertle urged the Trump administration to "encourage diagnostics and treatments that address the root causes of chronic diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and reverse the medical industry's current costly habit of merely treating symptoms."
They cited this course of action as a first step in unleashing a "new wave of care tailored to each individual person."
"A holistic, individualized approach to federal healthcare is in short order," they added. "Under current regulations, patients who seek such care must go outside of their traditional health plans to receive it or opt into health sharing ministries that provide the personalized care they desire."
Faddis and Oertle asked Trump to overhaul the FDA's patent restrictions.
"Providers and patients must be freed to use off label medications and alternative treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat conditions including COVID-19 and be empowered to rely on nutraceuticals and vitamins that enhance patient health but that cannot be patented under current FDA guidelines."
"The administration must ensure top notch environmental quality and public health protections," the letter stated. "Far too many patients suffer from chronic and terminal conditions resulting from environmental toxicities. Yet, their doctors frequently fail to consider environmental causes when diagnosing patients."
The letter states that most oncologists "never evaluate carcinogens when patients come to them with cancer, even though many toxins are carcinogenic."
"Our government leaders should bolster regulations on pollutants that harm air and water quality," the letter contends.
After citing "endocrine disruptors, plastics and forever chemicals" as examples of pollutants "linked to cancer and respiratory diseases" the government should increase regulation of, the Solidarity Healthshare leaders urged the administration to push back on "easy access to processed foods and additives" while working to increase "access to nutrient-dense whole foods."
They identified the "unchecked production of processed, nutrient-deficient foods" as the cause of "chronic diseases" that are "undermining Americans' health, and reducing the lifespans of their families and loved ones."
"Addressing the root causes of illness and prioritizing positive outcomes for individual patients has proven highly effective for improving the health [of] Solidarity HealthShare members. All Americans deserve access to this kind of care."
The letter concluded with a call for the Trump administration to enable healthcare companies to embrace "each person's dignity and God-given right to life," saying, "Health policies should be centered around protecting the doctor-patient relationship and providing life-affirming care to the most vulnerable, especially the elderly, the unborn and the chronically ill."
"Securing this type of care would not only protect faithful Catholics in healthcare who after having their conscience rights threatened by Vice President Harris voted for Trump at the ballot box by an 18-point margin, but it would reflect the reality that holistic, life affirming care is also the highest quality healthcare for all Americans."
Faddis and Oertle's letter comes less than a week after Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
When announcing the former Democratic and independent candidate for president as his pick to lead the agency, Trump vowed that Kennedy would restore HHS to "the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!"
Repealing and replacing Obamacare, the law also known as the Affordable Care Act that governs the healthcare system in the U.S. today, was a priority of the Trump administration's first term. However, the effort to reform healthcare largely disappeared after the U.S. Congress rejected a replacement plan in 2017.
The implementation of Obamacare has led to multiple court cases brought by faith-based employers challenging the law's mandates that require employer-sponsored healthcare coverage to cover the cost of contraception and other procedures, surgeries and interventions that violate their deeply held religious beliefs.
Concerns about religious liberty materialized in the 2024 election when Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, suggested that she would not include religious liberty exemptions in a national abortion mandate during an interview last month.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
