Q: My son was dropped from our family’s employer-sponsored health insurance shortly after graduating from college in May. While filling out the application for a new policy, he asked me how to answer a question about his marijuana use in the past year. I said, “Honestly.” He checked a box indicating he smoked very occasionally and was denied coverage. Now he is uninsured while countless pot-smoking liars have coverage. My husband thinks I gave our son foolish advice. Do you agree? — M.H., Montclair, N.J.
A: In this situation, there is no good advice. Some problems are simply not amenable to an honorable individualist solution, offering a choice only between disheartening alternatives.
Honesty may not always be the best policy but we rely on the trustworthiness of those we do business with. Were your son to lie on that form, he’d do his small part to erode that trust. And yet it’s hard to see how he’d harm the insurance company. Few dire health consequences result from sporadic youthful pot-smoking or even occasional adult pot-smoking.
And so, were I filling out that form, I’d lie without remorse. But I could not advise my child to lie — even an older child, even to an insurance company. I would feel a parental duty to teach integrity and encourage civic engagement. So I would urge him to supply an honest answer on that form and write an urgent letter to his elected representatives, particularly those working on health care reform. The real solution here is to guarantee access to medical care to all people, not just those pot-smoking liars.
Update: The son appealed the decision. The company remained adamant but said he could reapply in a year. M.H. says she believes it was giving him a nod and a wink, hinting that next year her son should simply lie. The parents were able to get him back on his father’s policy for $500 a month.
Q: I work in the reference department of a large public library system. A caller sought someone to do some research, for which he was willing to pay. I told him that the library does not provide research services and described the materials we have that he should investigate. However, he was calling from a thousand miles away and could not come in. Could I have undertaken this paid research on my own time? Isn’t this similar to a teacher who moonlights as a tutor? — Name Withheld, California
A: If doing such research is not a function of your day job and you tackle this commission after hours, then there’s no harm in it. It is also pertinent that he phoned from out of state. Even if your library provided extensive research services, he’d be geographically unable to drop by and avail himself of those services, and hence would need to hire a local researcher. There’s no reason that the local researcher can’t be you.
You would be wrong to accept outside payments simply for doing your job. That would present a conflict of interest, an incentive to slack off during the workday in the hope of charging the punters — sorry, patrons — for similar tasks after hours. And you’d cultivate the misleading expectation in those patrons that they must slip you some cash to receive the ordinary library services to which they are entitled.
As you suggest, schools face a related problem: They do not want teachers to have a financial interest in ill-educating their students, who would then need pricey tutoring, conveniently available from those very teachers. A solution some New York private schools have adopted is to forbid teachers to provide paid tutoring to any of their own students. A resourceful countermeasure some teachers could adopt: Those at one school refer student-customers to colleagues at another.
Send questions and comments for Randy Cohen to Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111, or ethicist@nytimes.com.
