Difference Between Fair Innings And Equal Opportunity
Fair Innings and Equal Opportunity
The justification behind fair innings and equal opportunity as an age-based rationing tool, contains the idea that it would be best to allow people an equal opportunity to live for a long time, by shifting resources to the young so that they may also ideally reach the arbitrary ‘old age’ figure, thereby maximising the life-years saved. Kilner argues that such justification is dubious as it “places value on the potential life-years saved rather than the actual lives (i.e. persons)” (Kilner 1988; Pxx).
Striving to preserve or a extend a life of one person (the young) is a worthy effort, however doing so at the expense of refuting any chance of living to another (by denying resources to the old) is ethically …show more content…
Yet, if we concede that it is valid to consider issues like this in making resource allocation decisions, we open the doors to endless examples of patients who had lesser opportunity to experience life. A leading advocate for ‘equal opportunity’ Robert Veatch himself, admits that such assessments would be “an over-whelming and complicated task” naming it “procedurally and administratively a nightmare”. Therefore age is too rough an indicator of lifetime opportunity to be applied in decisions about life and death.
The other associated problem related with equalising opportunity, is that it does not take into account any quantification of previous utilisation of resources by the young. For example would a 60 year old who had never utilised any excessive health resources be considered to have had her ‘fair-innings’ in resources when compared to a young adult who was born with a heart defect and subsequently received twenty years of life-extending medical …show more content…
Yet in allocation and economic terms, this does not appear to be fair or sensible. Granted, the argument here could be that it doesn’t matter how much each person gets provided they all reach old age that is what is meant by equal opportunity – therefore the 60 year old is lucky to have never had to utilise the healthcare system in the past, while the young adult born with disease should be supported to reach a certain age as she was more disadvantages to begin with. However this would no longer be an argument of “equal opportunity” and treating people equally, instead it is simply favouring the young and worst-off.
I realise within health policy there will always be some level of inequality and exceptional circumstances if you dig deep enough, and that such age-based rationing proposals do not deny this fact. However the argument presented here is that the ‘equal opportunity’ justification it neither sensible nor
The justification behind fair innings and equal opportunity as an age-based rationing tool, contains the idea that it would be best to allow people an equal opportunity to live for a long time, by shifting resources to the young so that they may also ideally reach the arbitrary ‘old age’ figure, thereby maximising the life-years saved. Kilner argues that such justification is dubious as it “places value on the potential life-years saved rather than the actual lives (i.e. persons)” (Kilner 1988; Pxx).
Striving to preserve or a extend a life of one person (the young) is a worthy effort, however doing so at the expense of refuting any chance of living to another (by denying resources to the old) is ethically …show more content…
Yet, if we concede that it is valid to consider issues like this in making resource allocation decisions, we open the doors to endless examples of patients who had lesser opportunity to experience life. A leading advocate for ‘equal opportunity’ Robert Veatch himself, admits that such assessments would be “an over-whelming and complicated task” naming it “procedurally and administratively a nightmare”. Therefore age is too rough an indicator of lifetime opportunity to be applied in decisions about life and death.
The other associated problem related with equalising opportunity, is that it does not take into account any quantification of previous utilisation of resources by the young. For example would a 60 year old who had never utilised any excessive health resources be considered to have had her ‘fair-innings’ in resources when compared to a young adult who was born with a heart defect and subsequently received twenty years of life-extending medical …show more content…
Yet in allocation and economic terms, this does not appear to be fair or sensible. Granted, the argument here could be that it doesn’t matter how much each person gets provided they all reach old age that is what is meant by equal opportunity – therefore the 60 year old is lucky to have never had to utilise the healthcare system in the past, while the young adult born with disease should be supported to reach a certain age as she was more disadvantages to begin with. However this would no longer be an argument of “equal opportunity” and treating people equally, instead it is simply favouring the young and worst-off.
I realise within health policy there will always be some level of inequality and exceptional circumstances if you dig deep enough, and that such age-based rationing proposals do not deny this fact. However the argument presented here is that the ‘equal opportunity’ justification it neither sensible nor