Rationing and the Health Care System (PHIL 292)
Fall 2011
Mondays 3:05 – 5:35
Seeley Mudd 108
Reading Schedule
Week 1 (8/29) Introduction: Health systems basics &
Week 2 (9/5) Organ
transplantation Rosoff
* UNOS, Liver Allocation Policy
* UNOS, Liver Patient Information
* UNOS, Lung Allocation Policy pamphlet
* UNOS, Alien Transplant Policy
* UNOS, Statement regarding Convicted Criminals
Week 3 (9/12) The
moral case for rationing Ubel
*Ubel, Pricing Life (MIT, 2000), Intro and chh. 1-3
Week 4 (9/19) Ventilator
rationing Rosoff
* White et al., “Who Should Receive Life Support During a Public Health Emergency? Using Ethical Principles to Improve Allocation Decisions,” Ann. Intern. Med. 150 (2009): 132-38
* Rosoff, “Should Palliative Care Be a Necessity or a Luxury During an Overwhelming Health Catastrophe?,” Journal of Clinical Ethics 21(4) (2010): 312-20
* Rosoff, “Unpredictable Drug Shortages: An Ethical Framework for Short-Term Rationing in Hospitals,” American Journal of Bioethics (2011), in press
Week 5 (9/26) Bedside
rationing Ubel
*Ubel, Pricing Life (MIT, 2000), chh. 6-9
Week 6 (10/3) Cost-effectiveness
analysis: how it works (e.g.,
*Ubel, Pricing Life (MIT, 2000), chh. 4-5 & 10-11
Week 7 (10/17) Cost-effectiveness
analysis: ethical objections Sreenivasan
* Brock, “Ethical
Issues in the Use of Cost Effectiveness Analysis for the Prioritization of
Health Care Resources” in Anand et al. (eds.) Public Health, Equity, and Ethics (
Week 8 (10/24) Accountability
for Reasonableness (and its critics) Sreenivasan
* Daniels and
Sabin, Setting limits fairly, 2 ed. (
* Lauridsen and Lippert-Rasmussen, “Legitimate Allocation of Public Healthcare: Beyond Accountability for Reasonableness,” Public Health Ethics 2 (2009): 59-69
* Friedman, “Beyond Accountability for Reasonableness, “ Bioethics 22 (2008): 101-12
* Rid, “Justice and procedure: how does ‘accountability for reasonableness’ result in fair limit-setting decisions?,” J Med Ethics 35 (2009): 12-16
Week 9 (10/31) Rationing
at the end of life Tulsky
* Gawande, “Letting Go,” New Yorker (August 2, 2010): 36-49.
* Zhang et al., “Health Care Costs in the Last Week of Life,” Arch. Intern. Med. 169 (2009):480-88
*
Morrison et al., “
* Morrison et al., “Cost Savings Associated with US Hospital Palliative Care Consultation Programs,” Arch. Intern. Med. 168 (2008): 1783-90
Week 10 (11/7) Research
exercise: how are various states
curtailing Medicaid expenditures?
Week 11 (11/14) Provenge case Kevin Schulman
Week 12 (11/21) Rationing by age Sreenivasan
* Daniels, “The
prudential life-span account of justice across generations,” in his Justice and Justification (1996), ch. 12
* A. Williams, “Intergenerational equity: An exploration of the ‘fair innings’ argument,” Health Economics (1997): 117-32.
Week 13 (11/28) Concluding exercise: how should we ration? (student presentations)
Readings
Please buy a copy of Ubel’s Pricing Life. Other readings will be made available inside the course Blackboard site, either as PDFs or links to them.
Assignments
Students will be required to write a 600 word paper every other week. These assignments are due by noon on seminar day in Blackboard’s digital dropbox. Topics for the assignments will be posted weekly. The assignments will be graded and returned with comments.
Students will also be required to do a group research exercise (on state Medicaid budgets) and to make one presentation in class. Finally, there will be a ten page paper due at the end of term (students will select their own topics with guidance).
Grading weights
Twenty percent of the final grade will be based on each of: (i) the four highest grades on the weekly papers (out of the six written), (ii) the group research exercise, and (iii) the class presentation. The final paper will be worth forty percent of the course grade.
The grading will be done by Professors McKinney and Sreenivasan.
September 12, 2011