Centre for Policy on Ageing



Health care rationing affecting older persons — rejected in principle but implemented in fact
Author(s)	Marshall B Kapp
Journal title	Journal of Aging & Social Policy, vol 14, no 2, 2002
Pages	pp 27-42
Source	http://www.tandfonline.com
Keywords	Health services ; Grant allocation ; Consumer choice ; Social policy ; United States of America.
Annotation	Health care resources are finite and therefore need to be rationed among potential users. Over the past decade and a half in the United States, a variety of explicit, official rationing schemes have been proposed, including some in which chronological age would play a significant role. For ethical and political reasons, it is very unlikely that any age-based rationing schemes will be adopted explicitly and officially. However, various de facto forms of health care rationing are occurring at present. This article outlines the implications of payer behaviour, physician practice patterns, the development of evidence-based clinical practice parameters or guidelines, and reliance on consumer choice of health plans as unofficial and generally unacknowledged mechanisms of health care rationing that may exert an important impact on the accessibility of health services for older people. (KJ/RH).
Accession Number	CPA-030128202 A
Classmark	L: QCG: WYC: TM2: 7T
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.