Thirty states have exceptions to child-neglect laws that provide shelter from misdemeanor violations for parents who treat their children through prayer in accord with the beliefs of a recognized religion.
This case illustrates how emergency physicians find themselves with an empty toolbox and must compromise to meet their responsibilities to patients and themselves.
Physicians make patients aware of those interventions that they (the patients) may then refuse. In short, informed consent is less about patient decisions than it is about restraining physicians.
A major contributor to the lack of medicines in developing countries is an intellectual property regime that allows proprietary drug companies with intellectual property monopolies to charge high prices and maximize profit.
Undocumented patients in the United States with end-stage renal disease receive “compassionate” dialysis. Such patients oscillate between being marginally well and “ill enough” to receive dialysis while clinicians wrestle with complicity in a system that both offers and withholds life-saving therapy.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(8):E778-779. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.778.
Giving undocumented immigrants and those with DACA status (DREAMers) access to health care and medical education enables them to contribute to these systems.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(3):221-233. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.3.peer1-1703.
The all-payer rate setting model of pricing combines a uniform payment method with a single rate that all private and public insurers pay for a specific service, thus improving price transparency for patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(8):770-775. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.8.pfor1-1508.