DENVER (AP) — U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have taken a consistent line on a health care overhaul: It's vital, but they cannot support proposals that go too far in covering abortion and not far enough in protecting health workers who don't want to provide that procedure.

Now, at least a half-dozen bishops have gone beyond that position, some of them using hard-hitting terms such as "socialization" and "monopolization" to launch a broader critique of big government.

Their argument isn't that the federal government should necessarily stay out of health care coverage altogether, but that an oversized government health system could wield too much power over people's lives.

"Among the Catholic bishops, on all issues, there will be disagreement," said Mark Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University. "This is almost like the minority report being issued here."

Although the limited-government bishops are a small minority, if their arguments gain momentum it could pose another challenge to President Barack Obama's efforts to make sweeping changes to the nation's health care system.

U.S. bishops for decades have advocated comprehensive health care coverage as a right for all Americans, with a special focus on meeting the basic medical needs of the poor, elderly and disabled.

But bishops taking the lead on health care - the ones who have written letters to Congress on behalf of the bishops' conference - have made it clear that the current legislation has too many problems.

Bishops have criticized proposals that would allow the proposed government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions. As it stands, federal funds for abortions are restricted to cases involving rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother. Bishops also are insisting on protections for health care workers who in good conscience feel they cannot have a hand in abortion services.

"The bishops want to support health care reform," Bishop William Murphy, chairman of the bishops' Committee Domestic Justice and Human Development, wrote to Congress. "We have in the past and we always must insist that health care reform excludes abortion coverage or any other provisions that threaten the sanctity of life."

The conference has not taken a position on the public option - a proposed government-run competitor to private insurers. But it supports "a variety of options" in health plans which may include a public one.

Most bishops voicing concern about overzealous government base their arguments in the Catholic social teaching of "subsidiarity" - essentially, that decisions are best made at the lowest level possible.

Among the bishops who have written columns, commentaries or pastoral letters including comments about excessive government control of health care:

• Bishop Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, warned that health care should not be subject to "federal monopolization." He wrote "... the proper role of government is to regulate the private sector in order to foster healthy competition and curtail abuses. Therefore any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect."

The church, Nickless wrote, "does not teach that 'health care' as such, without distinction, is a natural right."

• Bishop Thomas Doran of Rockford, Ill., wrote that health care should be thought of "as more of a market than a system." He added: "Our federal bureaucracy is a vast wasteland strewn with the carcasses of absurd federal programs which proved infinitely worse than the problems they were established to correct."

• Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote that "a proper government role in solving the health-care crisis does not necessarily demand a national public plan, run or supervised by government authorities. Real health-care reform need not automatically translate into federal programming."

• Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo, N.D., cited the danger of thinking "the national government is the sole instrument of the common good."

The most thorough critique, however, comes in a joint pastoral letter from Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Kansas City, Kan., diocese and Bishop Robert Finn of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese in Missouri.

Posted online Tuesday, the letter says: "The right of every individual to access health care does not necessarily suppose an obligation on the part of the government to provide it ... The teaching of the universal church has never been to suggest a government socialization of medical services."

A government that oversteps its authority on health care, the bishops wrote, could create a future tax burden and contribute to "permanent dependency for individuals or families upon the state."

In an interview, Finn said "necessary health care" is part of the right to life, and that the government probably has a role in providing it. He said the letter was not meant to scuttle reform or help Republicans.

"It's not so much a commentary applied to some current proposal as much as a caution about the government trying to do something they may not be able to do very well, and which may be extremely costly and perhaps could be a step back from the quality of the health care we have right now in our country," Finn said.

Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O'Brien said he shares concerns about unnecessary government control of health care, but isn't familiar enough with current legislation to judge whether it goes too far. But he suggested there are limits to bishops' ability to use the principle of subsidiarity in critiquing health care reform.

"We can state the theory as pretty certain and proven, but the application of it isn't really up to us, it's up to the professionals, unless it's something very obvious," O'Brien said in an interview.

In a column in the National Catholic Reporter, Duquesne University law professor and canon lawyer Nicholas Cafardi criticized those bishops using the strongest rhetoric about government involvement in health care. He wrote they are "espousing political positions, not moral ones" and practicing politics that "would warm Rush Limbaugh's conservative Republican heart."

Cafardi said in an interview that stances that differ from the main message of the bishops' conference are counterproductive.

"The Catholic bishops in the U.S. have consistently taught that health care is a basic human right, and finally we have an administration willing to tackle that," said Cafardi, an abortion opponent who endorsed Obama. "To mischaracterize its proposal as socialism really doesn't advance the debate."

If the goal is health plans that restrict abortion funding and protect workers' consciences, then federal insurance plans rather than private ones are far more likely to accomplish that, said Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops' conference Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities.

"When people talk about federal takeover, all I want to say is, it's not important to us whether it's big government or not," he said. "The question is, is the government doing something good or doing something bad?"