Equity and Costs

Extract

The task of determining who should or should not have access to a life-prolonging procedure would not be easy even if cost were no consideration. In an era in which rhe health industry has largely converted to the cost cutting religion, or at least the religion of budget limitation, a conversion for which health economics is partly responsible-the task becomes doubly difficult.

At one level, the Massachusetts Task Force on Organ Transplantation has dealt with this task simply by recommending that the final decision be postponed, and that a limited program of organ transplantation he introduced in an “Initial Social Assessment” phase.