The current Medicare operation—reimbursing medical goods and services to a growing number of people without basing the reimbursement benefit on the actual cost of the services—is unsustainable, but there are some possible remedies.
Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.
The organ transplantation system is viewed as one of our most equitable health care services, but poor patients are effectively excluded by policy that denies Medicaid coverage of post-transplant immunosuppressant medication.
Physicians are cautioned that the two obstacles to reforming post-marketing clinical trials are the FDA's reluctance to revisit past approvals and its inability to enforce pharmaceutical companies' commitment to conduct Phase IV trials.
The concept stewardship borrows from collective action problems that cannot be solved by individuals only, just like those discussed in environmental ethics.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(6):E479-485. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.479.
Dr Katie Savin joins Ethics Talk to discuss their article, coauthored with Drs Laura Guidry-Grimes and Olivia S. Kates: “What Does Disability Justice Require of Antimicrobial Stewardship?”