Dr. Maureen Sander-Staudt of the SMSU Philosophy Department has been invited to speak at the European Association of Centers of Medical Ethics (EACME) annual conference. If her trip is approved, she will travel to Belgium September 8-10, 2016, where the conference will be held.

In 2011, Sander-Staudt wrote and published an essay in “Springer” where she argues that not only can virtue can be applied to collectives such as committees, business, and corporate business, but that care should be encouraged in particular.

In this essay, Sander-Staudt focused on the United States.

“We have hierarchal models in our corporations,” Sander-Staudt said. “The people at the top have a lot more power than just the grunt workers at the bottom.”

   Because of this, Sander-Staudt argued that corporations can only be as virtuous as those in charge.

“Although I did recognize that sometimes the CEOs can be complete scoundrels,” Sander-Staudt said. “Think about Enron. The people who were in charge were scoundrels, but most of the people who worked at the corporation were good people.”

Sander-Staudt admits that it’s complicated, but when we think of Enron today, we think of a corrupt corporation, but we save that contempt for only those who were in charge.

“We don’t blame those people who were at the lower levels of power, because we know that they didn’t have control over the decisions,” Sander-Staudt said, “so when we call a corporation vicious, what we really mean is the people who had the ability to make decisions, and who made decisions.”   

Sander-Staudt also argued a corporation has the right to care for itself, but if it has the ability to offer certain benefits to its employees without going bankrupt, it should.

This essay caught the attention of EACME who asked Sander-Staudt to talk about how this would apply to the European model of healthcare.

“I think this is going to be a challenge because they have asked me to speak to medical ethics not in the American context, but in the European context, and that’s quite different,” Sander-Staudt said.

Sander-Staudt admits that she may have to rethink her perspective because the European System is not run by corporations, like insurance companies and medical co-operatives.

These nations already have nationalized healthcare systems.

“So that argument doesn’t need to be made,” Sander-Staudt said, “I think the issue will be more in terms of distribution.”

Distribution becomes an issue when discussing nationalized healthcare, because someone may feel that if they can pay for better care, they shouldn’t have to wait in line. Less serious conditions may be pushed aside for more serious ones.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Sander Stoudt said. “[If I were] in pain, it might not be life threatening, but I [would] have to wait two years because other people have more urgent issues.”

This is an argument made in favor of the U.S. model.

“It’s fair in the sense that you get the care that you can pay for,” Sander-Staudt said, “and if you really have a life emergency you can go to the emergency room and get treatment. It’s just that you’re going to owe some money for that.”

Sander-Staudt said that some people argue this is why many Canadians come to the U.S.

“Number one they can get treated more quickly,” Sander-Staudt said, “and number two we have much better technology because we do have health care that’s run for profit and they take that profit and reinvest it in research and development.”

Many argue that Europeans benefit from the US model because although European nations offer nationalized healthcare, they’re getting the latest technology and prescription drugs from the U.S., who is only able to develop it because its system is run for profit.

This model also has its drawbacks, Sander-Staudt said.

“Imagine there’s this very rare condition that very few people get and there’s not a lot of money to treat it because maybe only one or two people every ten years has it.”

There would be no profit in researching this condition, so there would be no rush to do it. In a national model, the value of research can be assed without discussing profit.

“I think the big question to get clear on,” Sander-Staudt said, “is how can institutions be caring?”