The Common Good and Christian Ethics rethinks the ancient tradition of the common good in a way that addresses contemporary social divisions, both urban and global. David Hollenbach draws on social analysis, moral philosophy, and theological ethics to chart new directions in both urban life and global society. He argues that the division between the middle class and the poor in major cities and the challenges of globalisation require a new commitment to the common good and that both believers and (...) secular people must move towards new forms of solidarity if they are to live good lives together. Hollenbach proposes a positive vision of how a reconstructed understanding of the common good can lead to better lives for all today, both in cities and globally. This interdisciplinary study makes both practical and theoretical contributions to the developing shape of social, cultural, and religious life today. (shrink)

The public responsibilities of nonprofit hospitals have been contested since the advent of the 1969 community benefit standard. The distance between the standard's legal language and its implementation has grown so large that the Internal Revenue Service issued a new reporting form for 2008 that is modeled on the Catholic Health Association's guidelines for its member hospitals. This article analyzes the appearance of an emerging moral consensus about community benefits to argue against a strict charity care mandate and in favor (...) of directing efficient care delivery and healthy community initiatives to underserved populations. The analysis turns on three moral conceptions of community benefits, the social contract model of hospital critics and the common good and covenantal models of Catholic and Jewish hospitals. (shrink)

How should medical services be distributed within society? Who should pay for them? Is it right that large amounts should be spent on sophisticated technology and expensive operations, or would the resources be better employed in, for instance, less costly preventive measures? These and others are the questions addreses in this book. Norman Daniels examines some of the dilemmas thrown up by conflicting demands for medical attention, and goes on to advance a theory of justice in the distribution of health (...) care. The central argument is that health care, both preventive and acute, has a crucial effect on equality of opportunity, and that a principle guaranteeing equality of opportunity must underly the distribution of health-care services. Access to care, preventive measures, treatment of the elderly, and the obligations of doctors and medical administrations are fully discussed, and the theory is shown to underwrite various practical policies in the area. (shrink)

USING QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS AT CATHOLIC AND JEWISH HOSPITAL organizations, this essay contrasts the market-driven reforms of consumer-directed health care and physician entrepreneurship with the mission-driven structures of religious nonprofits. A structural analysis of values in health care makes a convoluted system more transparent. It also demonstrates the limitations of market reforms to the extent that they erode organizational structures of solidarity, which are needed to pool risks, shift costs, and maintain safety nets in a complex and expensive health economy.