Should life-sustaining medical care be rationed based on age? essay
Age-based rationing remains highly controversial. This question has been central during the Covid-19 crisis. Analyzing the practices, proposals and guidelines applied or put forward during the current pandemic, three types of age-based rationing are identified: an age-based limit, age as a tiebreaker, and indirect age, healthcare professionals healthcare professionals the paper . The article is based on healthcare professionals. It begins by analyzing the reasons why the United States may be experiencing a physician shortage rather than a surplus. The article also analyzes the factors contributing to the nursing shortage in the US. Medical care to prolong life can keep you alive if these organs no longer function properly. The treatments can prolong your life, but they do not cure your disease. These are called life-sustaining treatments. Life-sustaining treatments. Treatments to prolong life may include the use of machines. This equipment does the work of the body organ. Opposition to rationing health care for the elderly is enormous. This article explains the need for rationing, based on forecasts of Medicare spending in the near future, and on the judgment of policy experts that there will be no technological breakthrough that could lower costs. Life-sustaining therapies are legitimized by both medical indications and the patient's consent. Medical indications and accurate prognosis, including survival of critical illness and potential consequent morbidity, subsequently termed post-intensive care syndrome, play a role in indicating the therapeutic goal. The use of age in the health care system is generally legal under current law. The Age Discrimination Act and the age discrimination prohibitions in the Affordable Care Act allow the use of age-based criteria explicitly set forth in the law. It also allows the use of age-based criteria necessary for normal life. Old age and the rationing of health care. In: Binstock RH, Post SG, eds. Too old for healthcare controversies in medicine, law, economics and ethics. Baltimore, London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1991: 1 - 12. Google Scholar