Grow the pie, or the resource shuffle? Commentary on Munthe, Fumagalli and Malmqvist
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21515114 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ben Davies (0000-0003-4612-7894, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 98-99 |
| Publication date | 2021-02-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Medical Ethics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0306-6800 • E-ISSN: 1473-4257 |
| Publisher | BMJ (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1136/medethics-2020-107056 |
| PMID | 33335069 |
| OpenAlex | W3111793195 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 2 |
John Rawls’s ‘just savings’ principle is among the better-known attempts to outline how we should balance the claims of the present with the claims of the future generations on resources. A central element of Rawls’s approach involves endorsing a sufficientarian approach, where our central obligation is to ensure ‘the conditions needed to establish and to preserve a just basic structure’.1 This engaging paper by Christian Munthe, Davide Fumagalli and Erik Malmqvist (‘the authors’) does not explicitly mention Rawls’s work on this issue.2 Still, there are parallels in their aim to generate a ‘sustainability principle’ for healthcare systems. The authors defend the broadening of our focus to the relations between rounds—particularly, how decisions in one period can affect our choice range in the next, whereas current principles for allocating healthcare resources operate within ‘allocation rounds’. Where Rawls is concerned about future generations, the authors’ concern is with future sets of patients. Our present decisions may generate system ‘dynamics’ which are either positive—where ‘more resources per health need’ become available—or negative—where (otherwise justified) decisions taken now leave us with less bang for our buck in the future. The paper’s important and compelling central claim is that we have an obligation
Economics · Health care · Law and economics · Management · Obligation · Operations management · Parallels · Political science · Resource allocation · Sociology · Computer Science · Ethics in medical practice · Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life · Healthcare cost, quality, practices · Law · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |