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Accountability for Rationing — Theory into Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Christopher Newdick
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Extract

Most now recognize the inevitability of rationing in modern health care systems. The elastic nature of the concept of “health need,” our natural human sympathy for those in distress, the increased range of conditions for which treatment is available, the “greying” of the population; all expand demand for care in ways that exceed the supply of resources to provide it. UK governments, however, have found this truth difficult to present and have not encouraged open and candid public debate about choices in health care. Indeed, successive governments have presented the opposite view, that “if you are ill or injured there will be a national health service there to help; and access to it will be based on need and need alone.” And they have been rightly criticized for misleading the public and then blaming clinical and managerial staffin the National Health Service (NHS) when expectations have been disappointed.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Winter 2005 , pp. 660 - 668
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2005

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References

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