INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
Please answer the following questions from the readings, citing your sources using APA style.
Healthcare Allocation: an ethical framework for public policy:
1) How are ‘health,’ and ‘healthcare’ defined in this text? Do you agree?
2) Explain ‘basic goods,’ ‘positive moral norms,’ ‘negative moral norms,’ and ‘moral virtues’ and how each of these terms applies to healthcare.
3) What is the concept of community? What kinds of communities are included? How does this relate to the Common Good?
Human Dignity and the Common Good
4) Explain in your words Human Dignity as the reading from the Catechism presents it.
5) The common good is not the same as the sum of individual preferences (CSDC 164). Explain the difference, using an example.
6) What are the basic rights presented as belonging to the common good?
Health Care as a Social Good
7) What are the ‘moral languages of healthcare” in the US?
8) What is the difference between a private and public good in economic theory?
Human Dignity
I. Respect For the Human Person
1929 Social justice can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. the
person represents the ultimate end of society, which is ordered to him:
What is at stake is the dignity of the human person, whose defense and promotion have
been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the men and women at every moment of
history are strictly and responsibly in debt.35
1930 Respect for the human person entails respect for the rights that flow from his dignity as a
creature. These rights are prior to society and must be recognized by it. They are the basis of the
moral legitimacy of every authority: by flouting them, or refusing to recognize them in its
positive legislation, a society undermines its own moral legitimacy.36 If it does not respect them,
authority can rely only on force or violence to obtain obedience from its subjects. It is the
Church’s role to remind men of good will of these rights and to distinguish them from
unwarranted or false claims.
1931 Respect for the human person proceeds by way of respect for the principle that “everyone
should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as ‘another self,’ above all bearing in
mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity.”37 No legislation could by itself
do away with the fears, prejudices, and attitudes of pride and selfishness which obstruct the
establishment of truly fraternal societies. Such behavior will cease only through the charity that
finds in every man a “neighbor,” a brother.
