Patients and physicians do not know the cost of medical procedures. Opaque medical billing thus contributes to exorbitant, rising medical costs, burdening the healthcare system and individuals. After criticizing two proposed solutions to the problem of opaque medical billing, I argue that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should pursue a rule requiring that patients be informed by the physician of a reasonable out-of-pocket expense estimate for non-urgent procedures prior to services rendered.

Xenotransplant patient selection recommendations restrict clinical trial participation to seriously ill patients for whom alternative therapies are unavailable or who will likely die while waiting for an allotransplant. Despite a scholarly consensus that this is advisable, we propose to examine this restriction. We offer three lines of criticism: (1) The risk–benefit calculation may well be unfavorable for seriously ill patients and society; (2) the guidelines conflict with criteria for equitable patient selection; and (3) the selection of seriously ill patients may compromise informed consent. We conclude by highlighting how the current guidance reveals a tension between the societal values of justice and beneficence.

The passion of despair, according to Thomas Aquinas, is an appetitive movement away from a future arduous good that is impossible to attain. Criticism of his account of despair abounds. Nicholas Lombardo argues that despair cannot be proper passion because the appetite cannot move away from a good. Eric D'Arcy and Susan James argue that Aquinas's description of passions as movements casts doubt on his understanding of some passions, including despair. Michael Miller and John Patrick Reid deny that despair can be morally praiseworthy and conducive to action. In this paper, I defend Aquinas's account of the passion of despair from these criticisms.