Richard Zeckhauser, PhD and Benjamin Sommers, MD, PhD
While patient consumerism may cause inefficiencies that need to be managed appropriately, insofar as it leads to active patient participation it has the potential to improve medical decision making.
An attempt to investigate correlations between race, attitudes, and contraceptive use did not find meaningful associations between race and attitudes about birth control or pregnancy that could influence contraceptive choice.
In the September 2014 issue on physicians as agents of social change, Dr. Audiey Kao, editor-in-chief of Virtual Mentor interviewed Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development or USAID.
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.
Julian Savulescu's writing on conscientious objection is guided by an emphasis on the principle of distributive justice that does not allow religion to have a special status as justification.
The most controversial component of the ACA has arguably been the mandate that group health plans cover contraception costs, which has elicited backlash from religious and conservative groups who believe it violates certain employers' religious freedoms.