Barack Obama Policies in Healthcare: Ethical and Unethical Behavior Presentation

Barack Obama policies in healthcare

The policy statement: The United State should not have health care reform when members are working but it has to support every child and provide him/her with quality healthcare services.

Obama states that:

“Health insurance must work for people and businesses, not just insurance and drug companies” (Healthcare policy in an Obama administration: Delivering on the promise of universal coverage n.d.).

Principles of Ethical Behavior

• The principle of beneficence;
• The principle of common good;
• The principle of distributive justice;
• The principle of integrity and totality;
• The principle of respect for autonomy;
• The principle of respect for persons;
• The principle of toleration (Donaldson et al 2002).

Ethical Behavior in Healthcare

Ethics is crucial for healthcare because it determines values and principles of organizational behavior.

Proposed innovative technologies, which deal with people’s needs, provide satisfaction for these needs, and, hence, deliver utility (Smart and Williams 1990).

Ethical Behavior Principles

For Obama, it is important to recognize that ethics is a core of healthcare philosophy and interpersonal relations.

Without ethics, the healthcare policies will fail to meet communication norms and will be unable to establish positive human relations with partners and clients.

The proposed healthcare policies are based on the Judeo-Christian ethic which is generally considered to be the foundation of Western ethical and moral standards.

The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule are firmly ingrained in this ethic as is the Protestant work ethic and faith, love, charity, fairness, and justice.

Ethical Behavior

• For healthcare policies the benefits from cultivating the recognized virtues and ethical values will long survive as a recognized institution.
• Values and virtues are passed along in the community through mentoring.
• Personal loyalty and friendship are paramount values here.

Unethical Behavior

Fannie Mae Accounting

• Fannie Mae is accused in violation of accounting principles and unethical behavior.
• “We must consider the accountability of management to fully implement corrective measures and bring about broad cultural and operational changes in the areas of concern,” Falcon said. OFHEO’s report makes “it difficult to assert such confidence“ (Farrell 2004).
• Conflicts of moral duty come in various shapes, sizes, and intensities.
• The company cannot anticipate all such problems. But what such conflicts have in common is both situational and philosophical.
• A personal moral dilemma is experienced by the professional accountant.
• By philosophical we mean that thinking about essentials–goals, purposes, reasons–is ignited by the moral conflict.
• Confronting ethical dilemmas in professional accounting is a real task (De George, 1999).
• The consequences of unethical behavior at Fannie Mae would be quite severe to all parties concerned, as many famous audit liability court cases would verify.
• Again no simple solution exists, only the suggestion that those who manage accounting practices analyze the issue intelligently.

How to Improve Unethical Behavior

• Happiness and overall good are the aims of good life.
• Virtue is the main priority of every individual, so the company should be virtuous in order to meet the idea of happiness and good life (Carroll and Gannon, 1997).

In accounting the elements of internal control involve:

• segregation of duties,
• proper authorization,
• adequate documents and records and
• independent checks.

In accounting practice, ethical behviour encompasses:

• the monitoring of management activities to see if plans are being carried out;
• the analysis of accounting performance in terms of standards and objectives; authority, force, or coercion to guide accounting practice to the achievement of objectives; and constraining and regulating decisions and actions.

References

Donaldson, T., et al. (2002). Ethical Issues in Business, 7th edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Carroll, S. and Gannon, M. (1997). Ethical Dimensions of International Management, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

De George, R. (1999). Business Ethics, 5th edn, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Farrell, G. 2009. Letter: Fannie Mae ignored accounting principles USA TODAY. Web.

Healthcare policy in an Obama administration: Delivering on the promise of universal coverage . PWC (2009). Web.

Smart, J., Williams, B. (1990), Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge University Press.