In a new book called The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind, reporter Joe Nocera painted a less-than-flattering picture of the way many American industries, from banking to healthcare, handled the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Particularly troubling is his account of the for-profit hospitals. For example, The Wall Street Journal reported that hospitals in wealthy neighborhoods of Los Angeles routinely refused to accept transfer patients from overrun community hospitals, not because they didn’t have any beds available but to save money. According to the head of a community hospital in LA’s south side, her hospital treated more COVID patients than wealthier hospitals four times their size. 

Edmund Burke famously wrote, “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.”

For a market economy to remain free, businesses must operate with moral clarity. People must not be sacrificed for profit. What’s true for individuals is just as true for industries. We cannot serve both God and money.