Health Care Rationing: A Bioethics Dilemma



Health Care Rationing: A Bioethics Dilemma

Introduction

There is a great dilemma associated with the idea of providing adequate medical care to all Americans. But what is meant by the term “American?” According to the United States government policy, any hospital receiving Medicare benefits (which includes most medical institutions) is obligated to provide medical care to every individual, in the United States, regardless of their immigration status, race, age, religion, and financial status. However, the real question is, is this truly happening? This is not the first time such issues have been raised. One of the first medical dilemmas that brought health care regulations and decisions into the eyes of the government was the changing event of 1960 which is coined as the birth of bioethics.

Discussion

In 1960, Dr. Belding Scribner, a nephrologist of the University of Washington, developed a medical breakthrough by allowing those suffering from kidney failure to be live for several years. Dr. Scribner created a shunt that allowed patients to be connected to a dialysis machine and undergo periodic treatment and live for an extended time period. At the time of its invention, there were only a few of these machines but many candidates that required the service. With this in mind, a rationing decision had to be made which forced the formation of two committees to oversee who received the treatment and who didn't (Callahan, 2011).

Decision Making

These two committees, one formed to propose the medical criteria for selecting candidates and the other, an Admissions and Policy Committee formed to choose the patients that would receive the dialysis had to make these tough medical decisions (Callahan, 2011). The Admissions and Policy Committee, the decision making committee (whose members were anonymous) spent the next four years going through case by case to assess which patient was worth saving and which one wasn't. The committee had a hard time deciding each case and the idea of leaving the lives of individuals in someone's hand that had no idea whom they were was widely considered to be grossly inappropriate. After twelve grueling years, this dilemma finally came to an end in 1972.

In 1972, Congress passed a bill providing Medicare coverage for kidney dialysis. This bill provided financial support for the dialysis and helped to end the moral dilemma surrounding the decision made by the committee. To date, there are still arguments as to why the government decided ...