p and allocated in some way. (p. 105)
According to Eddy (1991), the allocation of health resources and services is already a part of the medical system in the sense that often the person who gets the best doctors or the most up-to-date medical equipment and procedures is often the person most able to pay. Further, many health care practioners are quietly making judgements that sometimes result in withdrawal of care for critically ill patients because they feel that there will be too little benefit to justify the cost and effort of ongoing intervention.
Nonetheless, the health care rationing being discussed in today's medical system is different in several ways from the kind of market-driven often individual doctor-based rationing that exists today. One big difference is that the rationing of health care services, organs, and other medical resources is now being discussed in terms of limited disbursement being official state or federal governmental policy.
Another difference with respect to the health care rationing being discussed by today's medical system is that the policy is targeting certain medical "lifesaving" procedures, procedures which would heretofore be provided or covered by state and/or federal agencies without question. In other words, for the first time, health care personnel and politicians are saying that the costs of an operation, medicines, or other medical interventions may be too high to justify saving a given individual's life if the only way the cost can be met is by the state.
A third difference between the common ways in which USA health care rationing exists and what is now being proposed is that the topic of rationing is arising not because the resource itself is scarce or unavailable but because of the financial costs of services. Indeed, the cost factor is of such importance to health care rationing that Hadorn (1992) states that in modern day America, realistic consideration of health...