Human Good and the Institutional Distortion of Values in the Field of Medicine

Abstract

The field of health care encompasses a myriad of ethical dilemmas surrounding the core conceptions of goodness and values. This thesis discusses the method of intentionality analysis, especially as it is explicated by Bernard Lonergan and his students, to raise awareness of a distortion of values related to health and health care in the United States. Health is a vital value that is meant to be upheld with absolute precedence by health care institutions. Values, of individuals and of institutions, as intentional responses to feelings, must be ordered in a specific way to align with the objective scale of values. Through the orientation toward, then the realization of true values, the good of order operates. Despite that health is the preferred value, health care institutions in the United States do not always operate in accordance with ordered values; there is a distortion of values experienced at the institutional level. In the United States, financial gain and greed compete with the execution and achievement of the true value of health and thus also of the terminal value. This disruption of the good of order contributes to the decline of human good, which may be remedied by conversion.