Phase-dependent justification: the role of personal responsibility in fair healthcare

The main aim of this paper is to examine the fairness of different ways of holding people responsible for healthcare-related choices. Our focus is on conceptualisations of responsibility that involve blame and sanctions, and our analytical approach is to provide a systematic discussion based on inte...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bærøe, Kristine (Author)
Contributors: Cappelen, Cornelius
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2015
In: Journal of medical ethics
Year: 2015, Volume: 41, Issue: 10, Pages: 836-840
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Summary:The main aim of this paper is to examine the fairness of different ways of holding people responsible for healthcare-related choices. Our focus is on conceptualisations of responsibility that involve blame and sanctions, and our analytical approach is to provide a systematic discussion based on interrelated and successive health-related, lifestyle choices of an individual. We assess the already established risk-sharing, backward-looking and forward-looking views on responsibility according to a variety of standard objections. In conclusion, all of the proposed views on holding people responsible for their lifestyle choices are subjected to reasonable critiques, although the risk-sharing view fare considerably better than the others overall considered. With our analytical approach, we are able to identify how basic conditions for responsibility ascription alter along a time axis. Repeated relapses with respect to healthcare associated with persistent, unhealthy lifestyle choices, call for distinct attention. In such situations, contextualised reasoning and transparent policy-making, rather than opaque clinical judgements, are required as steps towards fair allocation of healthcare resources.
ISSN:1473-4257
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of medical ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1136/medethics-2014-102645