A new volume of contributions to the health care rationing debate has been published recently by Maklu Publishers:
Andre den Exter, Martin Buijsen, eds. Rationing Health Care: Hard Choices and Unavoidable Trade-offs.
Leonard Fleck, Professor in the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences has a chapter in the volume entitled, “Just Caring: In Defense of the Role of Democratic Deliberation in Health Care Rationing and Priority-setting.”
Description from the publisher:
One of the most controversial issues in many health care systems is health care rationing. In essence, rationing refers to the denial of – or delay in – access to scarce goods and services in health care, despite the existence of medical need. Scarcity of financial and medical resources confronts society with painful questions.
- Who should decide which medicine or new treatment will be covered by social security and on which criteria such decisions must be based?
- Can age, for example, be justified as a selection criterion?
- Should decision-making be left to health care policymakers, hospital administrators, or rather, to treating physicians (‘bedside rationing’)?
- Is there a role for individual patients?
These are difficult questions that suggest the need for transparent and democratic decision-making. In reality, however, the rationing debate occurs in a sub rosa world, based on imperfect information, distorted interpretations of effectiveness, and hidden cost concerns.
Available on Amazon.com.
MSU Bioethics 