And we get to the real issue...
They think regulations tied to government funding should apply to other people, but not to them. Won’t fly.
Wrong again. Stem cell regulations do not require scientists to violate their religious oaths, where the abortion requirement would. Secondly, I don't know if a hospital is even ALLOWED to turn away a medicare patient, as you suggest the Catholics should do if they want to have religious freedon.
Many scientists’ religious or other beliefs require them to make their best effort to find cures for diseases. Their beliefs aren’t any less important than Catholic beliefs, and the government has no business deciding that one set of beliefs should get privileges that are denied to another set of beliefs.
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.