Health Care Rationing Issues

According to IOM (2008), the next generation of older adults will be like no other before it. It will be the most educated and diverse group of older adults in the nation’s history. They will set themselves apart from their predecessors by having fewer children, higher divorce rates, and a lower likelihood of living in poverty. But the key distinguishing feature of the next generation of older Americans will be their vast numbers.
According to the most recent census numbers, there are now 78 million Americans who were born between 1946 and 1964. By 2030 the youngest members of the baby boom generation will be at least 65, and the number of older adults 65 years and older in the United States is expected to be more than 70 million, or almost
According to AAM (1988), the rationale for a program of health care rationing based on age rests on the assumption that society should allocate its resources efficiently, and that age-based rationing represents the most efficient method of resource allocation. Within this context, it has been argued that since most of the elderly are not in the work force they do not directly benefit society. Although the elderly, it is argued, should be provided with basic necessities and comfort, the greatest portion of health care resources, including expensive medical technologies, are better deployed on younger, more productive segments of the population (American Medical Association [AMA], 1988, p. 1). One tool developed by economist that has been used to measure value of ones life so to speak is known as “quality adjusted life years or QALY”. It is a widely used measure of health improvement that is used to guide health-care resource allocation decisions. The QALY was originally developed as a measure of health effectiveness for cost-effectiveness analysis, a method intended to aid decision-makers charged with allocating scarce resources across competing health-care program (Kovner & Knickman, 2011, p. 258). Another common term for health care rationing is known as the “death panel, or Obama Death Council”. This panel is a government agency that would decide who would receive health care and who would not receive health care based on some form of standard implemented by the government. One difficult ethical question posed is, if we do ration health care, who decides how it is rationed, when and why? The advocates of rationing argue that society benefits from the increase in economic productivity that results when medical resources are diverted from an elderly, retired population to