What did Jesus say about health care?

A woman came to me who had spent everything she had on doctors and only got worse. I did not send her a bill.

At a Glance

What I said: Healing the sick is one of the things the gospels record me doing most often. I sent my friends out to preach God’s Kingdom and to heal the sick (Luke 9:2), and told them Freely you received, so freely give (Matthew 10:8). I said the nations will be judged by whether I was sick, and you visited me (Matthew 25:36).

What the rest of the Bible says: The prophets condemned rulers who haven’t strengthened the diseased or healed that which was sick (Ezekiel 34:4). The law of Moses sent people with skin disease to live outside of the camp (Leviticus 13:46). I touched them.

When today’s view appeared: In the 300s, Christians built some of the first hospitals in the Roman world that were open to the poor and to strangers. The idea that a person’s care should depend on what he can pay is not one of mine.

The short answer: I never charged anyone, I never asked who deserved it, and I never asked anyone what they had done to get sick.

Start with a woman in a crowd.

She had been bleeding for twelve years. Mark tells you exactly what that had cost her: she had suffered many things by many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better, but rather grew worse (Mark 5:26).

Twelve years. Every doctor. All her money. And worse.

Her illness also made her unclean under the law, and anyone who touched her became unclean too (Leviticus 15:19, 25). For twelve years, people had reason to keep away from her. She pushed through the crowd behind me and touched the edge of my clothes, and she was healed. I stopped, turned around, and found her. I did not scold her for touching me. I called her daughter and told her to go in peace (Mark 5:34).

What I did

The gospels say it again and again: I went through the towns healing every disease and every sickness among the people (Matthew 9:35). When the sun was setting, all those who had any sick with various diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them (Luke 4:40).

Every one of them. No one was asked to pay. No one was asked whether they had brought it on themselves.

A man with a skin disease, the kind the law sent outside the camp, knelt in front of me and said, If you want to, you can make me clean. Mark writes: Being moved with compassion, he stretched out his hand, and touched him, and said to him, “I want to. Be made clean” (Mark 1:40–41). I touched him before he was clean, not after.

At a pool in Jerusalem, a man had been sick for thirty-eight years, waiting for the water to stir, because people believed the first one in would be healed. When I asked him if he wanted to be well, he said: Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, another steps down before me (John 5:7). There was healing in that place, and he could never get to it, because others always got there first. I healed him where he lay.

When John the Baptist sent from prison to ask whether I was the one, I told his messengers to look: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them (Luke 7:22). That was my answer to who I was.

I healed on the Sabbath, and the religious leaders were angry. I asked them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good, or to do harm? To save a life, or to kill? They were silent (Mark 3:4). The rule mattered less than the man’s hand.

What I said

Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do (Matthew 9:12).

When my disciples saw a man born blind and asked me, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?, I said, This man didn’t sin, nor did his parents (John 9:2–3). His blindness was not a judgment.

When I sent my friends out, I told them: Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. Freely you received, so freely give (Matthew 10:8).

And in my story of the neighbor, the Samaritan did not only stop for the beaten man. He bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine (the medicine of the day), took him to an inn, and paid for his care. Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return (Luke 10:34–35). He paid in advance, and he promised to cover the rest.

What the rest of your Bible says

The law of Moses dealt with sickness mainly by keeping it away from others. People with certain skin diseases had to live apart: He shall dwell alone. His dwelling shall be outside of the camp (Leviticus 13:46). Whatever its purpose, it kept the community clean in the eyes of the law. It also left people alone for years.

The prophet Ezekiel judged the shepherds of Israel, meaning its rulers, for what they had not done: You haven’t strengthened the diseased. You haven’t healed that which was sick. You haven’t bound up that which was broken … but you have ruled over them with force and with rigor (Ezekiel 34:4). To God, a ruler who leaves the sick uncared for is a bad shepherd.

What my followers did with it

My followers took me seriously about the sick, sometimes at the cost of their lives.

Around the year 260, a great plague struck Alexandria. The bishop, Dionysius, wrote that while others pushed the sick away and fled, many Christians stayed to nurse them, and caught the disease, and died.¹

In the 300s, Christians built some of the first hospitals in the Roman world that took in the poor and strangers. Basil, bishop of Caesarea, built a great foundation outside his city around 370, with care for the sick and for lepers. A Roman Christian woman named Fabiola founded a hospital in Rome around 390, and nursed the patients with her own hands.²

For the next fifteen hundred years, much of the care for the sick in Europe was given by monks, nuns and religious orders. In the United States today, more than one in seven hospital patients is cared for in a Catholic hospital.³ Christian doctors and nurses work in the poorest places on earth.

What is new

Paying for care is not new. The woman in the crowd had paid many doctors. What is new is how much care can cost, and how many people it leaves out or leaves in debt.

In the United States in 2024, about 8 percent of people had no health insurance at all.⁴ In 2021, about 14 million American adults owed more than a thousand dollars in medical debt, and about 3 million owed more than ten thousand.⁵

Many of them are like the woman in the crowd. They have spent everything they had, and they are no better.

What You’ll Hear Back

“Jesus healed by miracles. That isn’t a health care policy.”

That is true. I did not write a law about hospitals. But I did tell my friends to heal the sick, and I told them to do it freely. And the man I praised in my story did not perform a miracle. He used oil and wine and paid an innkeeper. Most of the healing my followers have done since has been that kind, with ordinary medicine and someone willing to pay for it.

“Health care is a private matter. It isn’t the government’s job.”

How you arrange it is for you to decide together. Whether the sick are cared for is not. Some Christians have formed groups that share one another’s medical bills directly, outside the insurance system, because they believe believers should carry one another’s burdens themselves. But Ezekiel held the rulers responsible when the sick went uncared for. Whatever arrangement you choose, I will ask the same question of it that I asked about the man at the pool: who gets there first, and who never gets there at all?

“People should take responsibility for their own health.”

Many people could live more wisely, and it is good to encourage them. But I was asked once whose fault a man’s blindness was, and I refused to blame him or his parents. I never asked anyone what they had done to get sick before I healed them. If you make that the first question, you will have a lot of people waiting by the pool.

“We should pray for the sick, not depend on doctors.”

Pray for them. The letter of James says to call the elders, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord (James 5:14). In those days oil was also medicine. Prayer and care have always gone together. A church that prays for a sick man and does not help him pay for his medicine is the brother James wrote about, who says Go in peace. Be warmed and filled and gives nothing (James 2:16).

Check It Yourself

Look up: Mark 5:21–43.

You will find: a woman who had spent everything on doctors, and a dying girl, and what I did for each of them.

Then read John 5:1–9 and Luke 10:30–37, and ask who could not get to the water.

The Short Version

The gospels record me healing again and again, and I never charged anyone.

I touched the man with a skin disease, and told my friends to heal freely.

I refused to blame a blind man or his parents for his blindness.

The prophets condemned rulers who left the sick uncared for.

My followers built some of the first hospitals in the Roman world for the poor. The idea that care should depend on what you can pay is not mine.