Because health systems with high-functioning primary care services have decreased mortality and improved health outcomes, the sector can be classified as a public good, like police and fire services and public education.
AMA J Ethics. 2015; 17(7):637-646. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.7.stas1-1507.
Oliver Schirokauer, PhD, MD, Thomas A. Tallman, DO, MMM, Leah Jeunnette, PhD, Despina Mavrakis, MBA, and Monica L. Gerrek, PhD
An educational initiative is described in which medical and bioethics students observe health care in an urban jail for two days and reflect on their learning.
AMA J Ethics. 2017; 19(9):845-853. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.9.peer1-1709.
Using data from comparative effectiveness studies to inform cost-effectiveness analyses or other economic evaluations would strengthen ethical policy making.
AMA J Ethics. 2015; 17(7):651-655. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.7.pfor1-1507.
Dr Rajesh R. Tampi joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Drs Aarti Gupta and Iqbal Ahmed: “Why Does the US Overly Rely on International Medical Graduates in Its Geriatric Psychiatric Workforce?”
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.
Patients seeking IVF are highly motivated to become parents and may wish to preserve financial resources for surrogacy or adoption should IVF not succeed, so risk sharing appeals to them, which makes its high cost especially problematic.
With the U.S. Supreme Court likely to decide on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, it is instructive to understand the relevant policy positions of the largest physician organization in the country.
The social-justice question we must pose to physicians is: Are you willing to advocate for changes to the medical system that creates the need for you to take on charity care in the first place?
When called to consult or to testify at “sexually violent predator” hearings, medical professionals’ primary task is adapting recognized medical terminology to the SVP label; they are asked to shoehorn medical diagnoses into ill-fitting legal language.
Measuring outcomes alone is not the answer. There should be a way to reward the doctor for educating a patient about lifestyle modifications and then documenting that the care provided followed patient preferences.