The government is not forcing scientists to violate any beliefs or perform procedures that they have ethical disagreements with, where they would be with the Catholic hospitals.
The only thing that subjects hospitals to federal requirements to treat Medicare patients, illegal immigrants, and all the rest, is if the hospital accepts government funds. There may be additional Massachusetts laws that carry things further, but I seriously doubt that a law requiring a hospital to provide care to Medicare patients, even if it doesn’t receive a penny of government funding, would survive a Constitutional challenge.
Except "government funds" is very loosely defined. You seemed to be referring to medicare itself as government funding.
Yes, Medicare is government funding. It’s (along with Medicaid) the hook that’s used to apply all sorts of government regulations to doctors and hospitals. Just like Guaranteed Student Loans and other federal student financial aid programs are the hook that’s used to force PRIVATE colleges and universities to comply with all sorts of idiotic government regulations that end up turning the campuses into pits of leftist ideology. Why is it so hard for people on FR, of all places, to grasp that ALL government funded programs that provide benefits to private citizens are bad. Public schools are bad — they confiscate hardworking people’s money and then use it to run schools in way that many of the people who are paying the tab disapprove of — the only way you can get back what you paid in is to have your children and grandchildren attend the schools where they government teaches them whatever IT wants to. No way should Catholic hospitals get a pass on the sort of freedom-robbing regulations that every other institution that gets a penny of government money has to submit to. The Church has eagerly supported all this socialist welfare state stuff — it’s high time they got a harsh lesson in why it’s bad.
Preventing scientists from pursuing research that they believe to be beneficial to humankind is certainly an example of government forcing its beliefs on unwilling citizens. These scientists pay taxes too, and shouldn’t have to abandon putting their beliefs into practice through their profession in order to get their fair share of the money back. If the solution for the scientists is supposed to be “Just go work for an institution that only uses private money”, then that solution is fine for the medical staff of Catholic hospitals too.