Provision of satisfactory healthcare in the US today has faced social, economical and legal challenges. Health care providers and practitioners have to deal with ethical issues patients’ rights and wishes. Healthcare provision is influenced by non medical factors like the patient’s hopes, beliefs and values. For a long time now, questions have been raised over what is ethical and what is not ethical in the healthcare industry with most questions remaining unanswered up to date.
However, there has been a common thought that ethics should take precedence over anything else in the provision of healthcare. One of the most contested debates concerns how much healthcare resources should be spent on patients’ whose survival has been compromised due to critical sicknesses. This has also been referred to as ‘medical futility’ or healthcare that is unlikely to produce noteworthy results for the patient. Some legal clauses in the healthcare industry are also debatable.
For example an individual may be deprived of the right to make health related decisions if the doctor proves to a court of law that his health condition has deteriorated to the extent of compromising his ability to make sound decisions. More often than not, in the process of providing healthcare to patients several issues requiring the intervention of a court, risk manager or an ethicist may come up. Sometimes managing high risk situations may subsequently lead to ethical concerns which occasionally call for court intervention in an effort to find justice for the parties involved.
Ethics and Modern Healthcare Making decisions that meet ethical requirements is one of the most complex situations in the provision of healthcare due to the fact that there is no clear cut guidelines that balance ethics and medical issues. This is the source of the expression ‘ethical dilemma’. What is ethical to one may just mean what is right according to their judgment which in most instances ignores other people’s feelings about the same. It basically implies that making healthcare decisions based on ethics may not only lead to undesired result, it could even lead to loss of lives.
However, the society has a collectively agreed set of values which must be followed alongside other relevant parameters which guide in the delicate process of healthcare provision. Just like other technological advancements which come with ethical challenges, one of the modern ethical concerns in healthcare is as a result of the new genetic diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities which people now fear can be used against patients (Merck Online medical library). Through this technology, it is possible to read a person’s genetic characteristics.
Knowledge about an individual’s genetic characteristics can be used to determine whether they are vulnerable to certain disorders. With such information individuals can be denied job opportunities on health claims. Some insurance companies can also decline to offer health cover for people diagnosed with terminal illnesses. WellPoint; an insurance company in Los Angeles was recently in the headlines for canceling health insurance covers for women who were diagnosed with breast cancer Reuters (2010).
Additionally, there is a new development in the healthcare industry which makes it possible for doctors to check for genetic defects in a fetus during pregnancy through prenatal screening. Although many have supported the use of prenatal screening to check for genetic abnormalities which could result in disorders, it is now emerging that some individuals might use this technology to select traits that they desire such as intelligence and appearance. This technology is capable of increasing abortion cases among women who are carrying fetuses whose genetic characteristics do not appeal to them.