Dilemmas in rationing health care services: the case for implicit rationing

Implicit versus Explicit Rationing of Health Services

In many developed countries, the concept of ra tioning healthcare services is treated as a taboo in the political debate. If someone argues in favor of certain types of explicit rationing, s/he immediately encounters fierce reactions by politicians and medical leaders and is sometimes even treated as if s/he had proposed euthanasia. The quotation above from the former German Health Minister Rös...

Rationing health care in Canada.

Canada has been able to develop a fairly successful system of healthcare rationing by balancing the conflicting concerns of equal access and cost efficiency, federal funding and provincial control, and public sector management and private sector provision. Financial constraints limit the kinds of services included within the notion of equal access, however, forcing healthcare providers to make ...

NICE rationing of specialised health care services for South Africa?

EDITORIAL 368 Although public funds in post-apartheid South Africa have increasingly been used to broaden and strengthen primary health care services, secondary and tertiary care remains a critical component of our country's national health care system. 1 Nonetheless, given the expense relating to such specialist-based services, as well as the inflationary pressures resulting from the so-called...

Deciding how to decide: The case of health care rationing

On the Oregon trail: rationing health care.

The introduction of the purchaser-provider principle into the NHS will have at least one uncomfortable consequence perhaps not fully expected by its authors. It will direct public attention even more to decisions about the level and distribution of resources, both nationally and locally. In the past decisions about who should (and should not) get what medical treatment have been perceived, and ...