Setting Health-Care Priorities

What Ethical Theories Tell Us

Torbjorn Tannsjo (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

232 Seiten

2019
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-094688-3 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

With much of the world's population facing restricted access to adequate medical care, how to allocate scarce health-care resources is a pressing question for governments, hospitals, and individuals. How do we decide where funding for health-care programs should go? Tannsjo here approaches the subject from a philosophical perspective, balancing theoretical treatments of distributive ethics with real-world examples of how health-care is administered around the world today.

Tannsjo begins by laying out several popular ethical theories-utilitarianism, which recommends maximizing the best overall outcome; egalitarianism, which recommends smoothing out the differences between people as much as possible; and the maximin/leximin theory, which urges people to give absolute priority to those who are worst off. Tannsjo shows how, in abstract thought experiments, these theories come into conflict with each other and reveal puzzling implications. He goes on to argue, however, that when we consider health-care in the real-world, these theories all agree on a central point: in a well-ordered welfare state, more resources should be directed to the care and cure of people suffering from mental illness, and less to the marginal life extension of elderly patients. Tannsjo's book thus recommends a shift in spending to increase fairness and overall utility-while also recognizing that this kind of dispassionate suggestion, with its purely economic foundation, is unlikely to take hold in policy. Tannsjo's analysis is a case study in how ethical theories can sometimes lead to rational conclusions and recommendations that we are not prepared to accept.

Torbjörn Tännsjö has published extensively in moral philosophy, political philosophy, and bioethics. His most recent books are Understanding Ethics (Edinburgh UP), a simple introduction to normative ethics, and Taking Life: Three Theories on the Ethics of Killing (OUP, 2015).

Chapter 1. Introduction

Part One. Theory
Chapter 2. Utilitarianism
Chapter 3. The maximin/leximin theory
Chapter 4. Egalitarianism
Chapter 5. Prioritarianism
Chapter 6. Some controversial implications of the three theories
Chapter 7. Population ethics
Chapter 8. Utilitarianism with or without a prioritarian amendment?

Part Two. Practice
Chapter 9. Ideal and nonideal theory
Chapter 10. Triage in situations of mass casualty
Chapter 11. The maximin/leximin theory: in real life
Chapter 12. Utilitarianism/prioritarianism: in real life
Chapter 13. Conclusion

Erscheinungsdatum	11.07.2019
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	236 x 155 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
	Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Medizinethik
	Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-19-094688-1 / 0190946881
ISBN-13	978-0-19-094688-3 / 9780190946883
Zustand	Neuware