Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Difficult choices in treating and feeding the debilitated elderly
- 3 The American debate about artificial nutrition and hydration
- 4 Reflections on Horan and Boyle
- 5 The Living Will: the ethical framework of a recent Report
- 6 Some reflections on euthanasia in The Netherlands
- 7 Is there a policy for the elderly needing long-term care?
- 8 Is it possible to provide good quality long-term care without unfair discrimination?
- 9 The prospects for long-term care: current policy and realistic alternatives
- 10 What is required for good quality in long-term care of the elderly?
- 11 Should age make a difference in health care entitlement?
- 12 Economic devices and ethical pitfalls: quality of life, the distribution of resources and the needs of the elderly
- 13 The Aged: non-persons, human dignity and justice
- 14 Economics, justice and the value of life: concluding remarks
- Index
12 - Economic devices and ethical pitfalls: quality of life, the distribution of resources and the needs of the elderly
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Difficult choices in treating and feeding the debilitated elderly
- 3 The American debate about artificial nutrition and hydration
- 4 Reflections on Horan and Boyle
- 5 The Living Will: the ethical framework of a recent Report
- 6 Some reflections on euthanasia in The Netherlands
- 7 Is there a policy for the elderly needing long-term care?
- 8 Is it possible to provide good quality long-term care without unfair discrimination?
- 9 The prospects for long-term care: current policy and realistic alternatives
- 10 What is required for good quality in long-term care of the elderly?
- 11 Should age make a difference in health care entitlement?
- 12 Economic devices and ethical pitfalls: quality of life, the distribution of resources and the needs of the elderly
- 13 The Aged: non-persons, human dignity and justice
- 14 Economics, justice and the value of life: concluding remarks
- Index
Summary
Some while ago I heard a senior administrator give a rather unsatisfactory lecture on the topic of the distribution of resources within the Health Service. It was unsatisfactory not so much because the message of the lecture was that decisions in this area are extremely difficult to take, but because the speaker seemed to think that the repeated insistence on this point would do in lieu of an attempt to state the principles which govern, or at least should govern, the practice.
Decisions about the distribution of resources within the Health Service are important decisions for the obvious reason that the provision of funds for health care does not, and could not, meet all conceivable claims which might be made upon the budget. The Beveridge Report proposed that ‘a comprehensive national health service will ensure that for every citizen there is available whatever medical treatment he requires in whatever form he requires it’, but no matter how well funded, no health service could be comprehensive in this sense. Governments, civil servants and administrators are obliged, therefore, to allocate resources between the various specialisms, deciding how much is to be devoted to neo-natal care, how much to transplant surgery, how much to the care of the elderly, and so on.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dependent Elderly , pp. 158 - 180Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992