Advocates of age-based rationing argue that health care for the elderly should involve managing pain and symptoms but not treating with expensive treatments. They argue that the rationing of health services by age, society benefits from the increase in economic productivity that results when resources are diverted from the elderly retired population to those younger members of society who are more likely to be working. Although this type of rationing would decrease healthcare costs, I believe there are more effective and ethical ways to do so including tackling the costs of pharmaceuticals and focusing on preventive medicine. I believe it would be interesting to see how other industrialized countries, some of which have much higher life expectancies than us, decide how much and what care their elderly population should receive. Although there do seem to be some ethical concerns involved that need to be explored further, it makes sense from an economics point of view to invest more resources in treating the younger sects of the
Advocates of age-based rationing argue that health care for the elderly should involve managing pain and symptoms but not treating with expensive treatments. They argue that the rationing of health services by age, society benefits from the increase in economic productivity that results when resources are diverted from the elderly retired population to those younger members of society who are more likely to be working. Although this type of rationing would decrease healthcare costs, I believe there are more effective and ethical ways to do so including tackling the costs of pharmaceuticals and focusing on preventive medicine. I believe it would be interesting to see how other industrialized countries, some of which have much higher life expectancies than us, decide how much and what care their elderly population should receive. Although there do seem to be some ethical concerns involved that need to be explored further, it makes sense from an economics point of view to invest more resources in treating the younger sects of the