Social Justice and Health Care Management: An Elusive Quest?

Abstract

Contemporary debate on health care resource management is tied to a central moral issue: namely, how to achieve an optimum level of reasonable or appropriate treatment based on the medical condition of each patient. Failing to tackle and resolve this issue in a confident and forthright manner assures the present approach to health care decision making to continue in a state of indecisiveness if, indeed, not lethargy.Undergirding this moral issue is the foundational economic dilemma of controlling costs while limiting access to health care resources. Finding a just solution to an equitable distribution of finite health care resources is almost an impossibility. What this essay seeks, nonetheless, to undertake is an examination of the principles, socio-economic values, and the public policies needed to formulate health care compromises necessary to achieve greater stability in the normative decision making process. In turn, this will assure - ideally - a level of both distributive and social justice in the total allocative process.