Reference no: EM133577515

Question: The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("ACA") mandated that essential health benefits must include coverage for contraception at no charge to consumers. However, in 2017 and 2018, the Trump administration issued draft rules designed to make it easier for both not-for-profit and for-profit employers to exclude contraceptive coverage from an employee health plan if the employer has religious objections. The rules were challenged by several states attorneys general and is was blocked by a federal appeals court in July 2019. Do you believe that an employer should have the religious autonomy to run a company without their faith being coerced by the government in this manner, or do you believe the mandate is necessary because a woman's health should trump the religious employer's rights? Explain your answer. 2. Given that the obesity pandemic in the U.S. is directly related to the food industry, does the food industry have an ethical duty to protect the consumers' health by eliminating or restricting the types or amounts of unhealthy food available? Conversely, do you believe that the government should respect the personal autonomy of consumers (as argued by the food industry) to eat the foods of their choosing, including unhealthy foods that may satisfy a "junk food craving." Defend your position. 3. Should patients and their families be required to pay for treatment, which physicians have opined is medically futile care? Should this determination be made by the insurance company, the government, the patient's doctor, or some combination thereof? 4. Almost all U.S. states legally permit passive nonvoluntary euthanasia by withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from an incompetent patient when the patient is (1) in end-stage and terminally ill or (2) permanently unconscious and the patient's legal proxy requests it. The Catholic Church opposes all euthanasia. Consequently, in Catholic hospitals, a health care proxy's request for euthanasia on a permanently unconscious patient will not be granted; instead, a transfer to a secular hospital is offered. What is the theological rationale for this articulated in The Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church (2018). What is your view on this practice?