Medicine and finance. Is it just to ration health services for economic reasons?
Abstract
The article begins by clarifying the terms that are related above all to rationing itself and its most important forms: market and non-market economic rationing and non-economic rationing.Subsequent parts of the article deal with open non-market economic rationing; I argue that such rationing is necessary due to the irreducible divergence between supply and demand for health services. Moreover, I attempt to show that rationing is morally desirable and just, and that the decision to implement it requires social consensus. I maintain that a one-level system of health services is morally superior to mixed, multi-level models.