Age Discrimination and Age-Based Rationing of Health Care
Crystal LaShae Hunter
HMP671 – Ethics in Health Care - Fall II 2015 (Week 6)
Valparaiso University
Author Note:
“I have neither given, received, nor have I tolerated other's used of unauthorized aid."
Age Discrimination and Age-Based Rationing of Health Care
Health care as a social good, requires a tremendous amount of a nation’s expenditures; and health care is not the only social good that a nation must consider, there are also the social goods of defense, education, public health, and infrastructure, to name a few. In the United States alone, the percentage of the GDP spent on health care over a three year period, from 2011-2013, averaged 17.066% (17.1%, 17.0%, 17.1%, each respective year) (The World Bank Group, Inc, 2015). In retrospect, despite the passing and subsequent implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, with the final aspects of the bill effective January 1, 2015, the ever-rising cost of health care may never truly subside, as the nation’s baby boomers continue to age and subsequent chronic conditions often associated with aging such as coronary artery disease, diabetes, and certain cancers increase with the aging population. In fact, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (2015), Medicare accounted for 20% of total US health care expenditure in 2014, growing 5.5% and expected to “accelerate after 2015” in direct correlation to the expected increases in use of medical goods and services utilized by the aging, as well as the continued enrollment of baby-boomers into the Medicare program.
With such a looming high-cost of national resources, the concept of health care rationing must come into play, as the demand will certainly outweigh the supply. In fact, some argue that age-based rationing or “ageism” is the moral and ethically best choice in rationing