When Religious Freedom Clashes with Access to Care

I. Glenn Cohen, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Gregory D. Curfman

New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM
New England Journal of Medicine

Extract
At the tail end of this year’s Supreme Court term, religious freedom came into sharp conflict with the government’s interest in providing affordable access to health care. In a consolidated opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Burwell (collectively known as Hobby Lobby) delivered on June 30, the Court sided with religious freedom, highlighting the limitations of our employment-based health insurance system.

Hobby Lobby centered on the contraceptives-coverage mandate, which derived from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandate that many employers offer insurance coverage of certain “essential” health benefits, including coverage of “preventive” services without patient copayments or deductibles.


Cohen IG, Lynch HF, Curfman GD. When Religious Freedom Clashes with Access to Care. N Engl J Med 2014; 371:596-599 August 14, 2014 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1407965

Physicians, Medical Ethics, and Execution by Lethal Injection

Robert D. Truog, I. Glenn Cohen,  Mark A. Rockoff

Journal of the American Medical Association
Journal of the American Medical Association

Extract
In an opinion dissenting from a Supreme Court decision to deny review in a death penalty case, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously wrote, “From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.” In the wake of the recent botched execution by lethal injection in Oklahoma, however, a group of eminent legal professionals known as the Death Penalty Committee of The Constitution Project has published a sweeping set of 39 recommendations that not only tinker with, but hope to fix, the multitude of problems that affect this method of capital punishment.


Truog RD, Cohen IG, Rockoff MA. Physicians, Medical Ethics, and Execution by Lethal Injection. JAMA. 2014;311(23):2375-2376. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.6425