Letters

Rationing health care

Allocating resources only to treating present dangers would ruin preventive health care and jeopardise future lives

Editor–In his article on the objectives of the NHS John Harris argues that "there is a good principle that real and present dangers should be met before future and speculative ones."¹ Has he really thought about the implications of this? Immunisation, health promotion, and preventive interventions would all be swept away in favour of curative treatments. As the lives lost by such a shift in resources would be future lives and the people not identifiable beforehand, they would count for nothing. The state's obligation to protect the "citizen against threats to her life and liberty" only applies to immediate threats.

Harris argues that the health budget should be larger, as if a larger budget will somehow allocate itself and obviate the need for choosing between competing alternatives. He also claims that health care (and . . . [Full text of this article]

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