Safe patient handling laws and programs offer considerable benefits to health care workers, who have higher rates of exertion injuries than other workers.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(4):416-421. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.4.hlaw1-1604.
An undercurrent in all debates about allocation of health care resources to the poor is the matter of access to and coverage of health care for immigrants, particularly low-income and undocumented ones.
In Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that synthetically created DNA is patentable, but the isolation of unaltered gene sequences is not.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(9):849-853. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.9.hlaw1-1509.
U.S. courts have ruled that device manufacturer representatives’ presence in the operating room does not make them responsible for the supervision of physicians or liable for the practice of unauthorized medicine.
The federal requirement for providing emergency medical care to those who cannot pay has been unsuccessful in eliminating refusal of care and the practice of “patient dumping.”