post by Paul Kelleher
In light of the conversation we've been having about the American College of Physicians' Ethics Manual's statements on resource allocation, I thought I'd point to some short, web-accessible sources that can help advance our thinking about these issues. It should go without saying that this is a non-exhaustive list, and that I intend for these to provide useful food for thought, not knockdown arguments or silver bullets.
1. Peter Ubel's contribution here (begins on page 11).
2. Peter Singer's NYT Magazine article, "Why We Must Ration Health Care," here.
3. Frances Kamm's Letter in response to Singer's article, here.
(if you hit NYT's paywall when trying to access Singer and Kamm, let me know in the comments and I can help you out)
4. Norman Daniels's contribution here, especially from page 50 onward.
5. Marthe Gold's podcast here (the first is longer [14min] and worth your time). It is based on this 2005 paper in Health Affairs.
6. Jonathan Wolff's remarks here, especially from about 16:45 onward.
These last two focus on the ways in which the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) sets health care limits and priorities.
"are we discussing the european methods of rationing health care service and medicine, the canadian, the japanese, chinese, nigerian, egyptian, israeli, US, germany, switzerland....?
or a philosophical discussion of rationing of health care service and medicine in the abstract."
We can discuss all of these, of course. But this post provides largely philosophical sources that present ethical reflections on what is required for allocations to be substantively and procedurally fair.
Posted by: Paul Kelleher | 01/09/2012 at 12:47 PM