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.

A substantial proportion of patients seen by physicians have had an abortion or will have one in the future, yet acquiring the necessary skills to care for 30 percent of the female patient population has been made challenging for future physicians by a number of laws and amendments.

When adolescents seek emergency contraception in the emergency room, social judgment on the part of clinicians can hamper treatment.

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?

The importance of the Oregon experiment is that the state developed a public process for prioritizing medical services rather than relying on undisclosed private decisions by individuals or insurers.

If I am unwilling to pay more taxes so an 85-year-old stranger can have a left-ventricular assist device, then I am morally obligated to say the same holds true for a future version of me in those same circumstances.

A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.

Because of their preferential option for the poor, Catholic hospitals have become known as a "provider of last resort" for uninsured and underinsured citizens. The Catholic Health Association envisions a health care system in which unequal access to care is no longer a burden the poor must bear.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics' opinion on physicians' duty to the poor.