From the bulleted topics below, select one ethical issue from the topic that will be the focus of your research paper throughout the course semester. Write a brief one to two paragraphs on the reason for your choice of the ethical issue. Why is this important to you? Submit in Blackboard in a Word document.

Patients’ Rights and Responsibilities

• Ethical Issue: Should patients have the right to sue manufacturers of innovation medical devices in state courts under consumer safety laws for injuries resulting from use of experimental treatments involving high-risk devices?
• Ethical Issue: Should the government be able to limit the use of patient-prescriber data that was gathered in accordance with state regulations, if this data was subsequently used by the pharmaceutical industry in a way that violated patient privacy rights or failed to serve the government’s interests in controlling health care costs?
• Ethical Issue: When employees are harmed after being unlawfully denied coverage they were led to believe they had from summary documents in their employer-provided health insurance plans, do fairness and justice demand that they be provided a remedy?

Tax-Exempt Hospitals’ Duty to Provide Mutually Affordable Health Care

• Ethical issues: When should non-charitable, for-profit entities (physician group practices, pharmacies, cafeterias) be able to derive profits from the use of tax-exempt hospitals? And under what circumstances should tax-exempt hospitals be required to provide mutually affordable health care to patients?
• Ethical issue: Is discriminatory pricing for health care an ethic?

The Ethics of Care for the Mentally Handicapped and Disabled

• Ethical Issue: Should state advocates for the mentally disabled be able to sue another state agency for ongoing violations for federal law?
• Ethical Issue: Should the rights of patient be balanced against the rights of the public when it comes to potentially dangerous mentally ill patients?
• Ethical Issue: At what point is it acceptable to violate the human rights of disabled individuals in favor of the rights of the public?

Medical Malpractice and Negligence

• Ethical Issue: Should noncompliant patients be given the opportunity to sue their health care providers for malpractice?
• Ethical Issue: Should the duty of physicians and other prescribers to warn patients of the side effects of their medications be expanded to include non-patients as injured third parties?
• Ethical Issue: Do pharmacies have a duty and ethical obligation to protect the public from customers who may be abusing prescription medications?

Access to Affordable Health Insurance

• Ethical Issue: Should most Americans be required to maintain health insurance (and thereby participate in a health insurance risk pool), as an imperative of national health care reform based upon the ethical principles of human equality and social solidarity?

Influencing Consumer Preferences for Healthy Food Choices/Nutrition and Food Safety

• Ethical Issues: Would it be reasonable, or ethical, to require the food industry to influence consumer preferences in ways that would favor healthy choices? If poor diet, high risk for excess weight gain, and in some cases diseases such as diabetes are linked to frequent consumption of high-calorie fast foods and soft drinks, should the food industry be responsible for the public health costs that are attributable to weight-related illnesses in the same manner as the tobacco industry was held responsible for the public health costs attributable to smoking?
• Ethical Issue: Should GM seeds be introduced into farm plantings without first fully understanding their impact on the environment?

Allocation of Health Resources and the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

• Ethical Issue: Does the government have an ethical obligation to provide everyone living with HIV access to affordable health insurance so they can obtain medically needed care, including access to ARVs and AIDS medications?
• Ethical Issue: Should society permit an HIV-positive dental hygienist to be discriminated against simply because of his disease status?
• Ethical Issue: Should people living with HIV be subject to imprisonment or other criminal penalties for engaging in voluntary, protected sexual encounters without first disclosing their HIV status to prospective sex partners?
• Ethical Issue: Ethically speaking, if everyone infected with HIV has the right to make use of advanced medical innovations, does this also mean all innovations, including the newest medications for other illnesses and diseases, should be covered by basic health insurance? Should non-preventable diseases have a higher priority for insurance coverage than preventable diseases (not just HIV/AIDS)?

Drug Testing and the Rights of Pregnant Women

• Ethical Issue: In response to perceived illegal drug use by pregnant women, is it ethical for law enforcement and medical communities to work together to proactively combat drug problems in such women, given the special interests of the women’s unborn children, and if so, what ethical standards should determine how, or if not, why not?
• Ethical Issue: Is a pregnant woman’s right to privacy in her medical records outweighed by ethical interests in deterring illegal conduct that could harm a viable fetus? Should the issue of whether a viable fetus is considered a person be a factor in this controversy?

End-of-Life Care/Terminal Sedation and Physician-Assisted Dying

• Ethical Issue: Does the practice of terminal sedation constitute, or is it the moral equivalent of, euthanasia? Is there an ethical difference between the right to die with dignity and other rights related to personal dignity, medical treatment, and freedom from state-inflicted pain?
• Ethical Issue: Does the right to die, along with the traditional right to refuse unwanted lifesaving medical treatment, encompass the broader right to physician-assisted dying?
• Ethical Issue: Should hospices withhold artificial nutrition and hydration from PVS patients? If so, what ethical principles should influence decisions to withhold life-sustaining treatment and accept incapacitated patients to hospice, especially severely brain-damaged patients who have already had their artificial nutrition and hydration withdrawn?
• Ethical Issue: Should brain-dead donors for heart transplant surgery be declared dead using the irreversible cardio-circulatory death definition if their hearts can be (and are) successfully restarted in the bodies of other recipients?

Mature Minors’ Right to Refuse Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment

• Ethical Issue: Is it ethical to deny minors medical autonomy to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment (such as mechanical ventilators, intravenous medicines that force the heart to beat, dialysis, and artificial feeding that sustains life but cannot save life or cure a disease) at the end of their lives?

Employers’ Health Care Costs and Preventable Employee Behaviors and Conditions

• Ethical Issue: Should U.S. employers be permitted to penalize employees for smoking behavior and obesity conditions that increase employers’ health care costs? What ethical considerations should underlie lifestyle policies, such as the use of dynamic pricing in health benefit and life insurance plans that charge smokers and obese employees higher premiums?

Values and Principles Confronting our Health Care System

• Ethical Issue: Should medical ethics committees balance their values with the values of patients and their families when treatment decisions must be made?

The Ethics of Health Care

• Ethical issue: Should foreign citizens who have been granted legal non-immigrant resident status in the United States be eligible to receive access to Medicaid?

The Ethics of Disaster Management

• Ethical Issue: Should the allocation of resources be a factor in providing appropriate care in the face of modern, natural or man-made disasters?

Length: One paragraph to two paragraphs

Grading Criteria: Chosen Ethical Issue, 100 points