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Health Care Rationing Essay

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The short answer to this question is no, health care should not be rationed for the simple reason that it does not need to be. There are ample health-care resources available, and everyone is able to receive care without rationing. However, I believe it is important to define what rationing means. Rationing refers to the practice of distributing resources that may be in limited supply (Bodenheimer & Grumbach, 2016). On the one hand, there currently is not a shortage of health-care resources. On the other hand, although resources are not limited overall, there are still quite a few underserved areas. Thus, the question of whether health care should be rationed is not so simple to answer. In a situation where seven patients are in critical condition but the hospital has only five intensive care beds, does care rationing become necessary? In some cases, the answer is yes. Modern technology, however, has made it easier to transport patients from hospital to hospital by ambulance or by air. Telemedicine also allows patients to gain access to specialists in other geographic locations. Another area in which health care rationing may be necessary is organ transplant (Bodenheimer & Grumbach, 2016). …show more content…

Practitioners pay large sums of money to liability insurance carriers. Reform could minimize these expenses and therefore decrease overall health-care costs. Currently, health-care practitioners feel they have been forgotten in health-care reform, but I think that if malpractice reform occurred, practitioners would be more agreeable toward healthcare reforms. Practitioners are concerned about the decreased reimbursements and loss of control in decision making that have resulted from the passing of the Affordable Care Act. Most practitioners will agree and are happy with the fact that more people are insured. It is hard to make major changes if practitioners are not on board with

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