The purpose of this report was to examine health care rationing. To this end, the report addressed several areas including the advantages and disadvantages of rationing, the Oregon plan for rationing of health care, and the allocation of organs and other scarce medical resources among patients. Regarding the allocation of organs and scare resources, three topics were covered. These concerned allocations associated with considerations of age, terminal illness, and unhealthy lifestyle.
Health care rationing was defined as the disbursement or allocation of health care services and supplies based on costs. It was noted that the primary advantages of the system are that it reduces health care costs while maintaining quality and that it provides the state with the capability for universal access. The primary disadvantage was said to involve the moral and ethical issues such as decisions about what procedures to ration and who society might accept as best fitted to make the decision.
It was concluded that there are sound reasons for developing a policy for the rationing of health care but that the developed policy should probably limit itself to practices and procedures which, if withheld, will not result in the death of a person that could be saved. Such a policy might not hold done costs as effectively as if life-saving procedures were withheld but it would nonetheless assist in holding down some costs, especially if it were combined with other policies such as setting caps on physicians salaries, eliminating waste, regionalizing, and so forth.
Health Care Rationing: Advantages and Disadvantages
Eddy (1991) defines health care rationing in terms of the allocation or distribution of limited resources. As Eddy puts it:
The notion is that the supply of a resource is limited and it is not possible for everyone to receive all of the resource that he or she would like to have. The resource must therefore be divided u...