The Department of Health and Human Service's decision to include a religious exemption to its requirement that private health plans cover contraception without patient cost-sharing raises questions about whether such an exemption appropriately balances the needs, beliefs, rights, and obligations of all affected.
Daphne C. Ferrer, MD and Peter M. Yellowlees, MBBS, MD
Telepsychiatry extends access to psychiatric treatment to those who might not otherwise get it, but licensure problems and the risk of boundary violations between patients and physicians need to be worked out.
Mei Wa Kwong, JD, Mario Gutierrez, MPH, and James P. Marcin, MD, MPH
Although cross-state licensure is currently a barrier to the widespread adoption of telemedicine, policies that would expedite it or remove the requirement to be licensed where patients are located have been proposed by the Federation of State Medical Boards and the federal government.
Qualifying conscience protections for institutions with requirements that they minimize hardship caused to the patient would prevent religious institutions from acting as a choke point on the path to services.
If employees of religious institutions whose consciences conflict with those of their employers were to be granted legal protection for positive claims of conscience, the religious freedom of institutions within which they work would be gravely compromised.