Question

Describe the ethical reason why safety net healthcare facilities are needed or not needed throughout the country. Please justify your answer

Answer 1

The issue of ethics and economic efficiency in the provisioning and delivery of services becomes complex in the Indian context where health indicators are poor. Healthcare institutions across the world are facing challenges in the delivery and provisioning of services with financial solvency. Patient care now competes with the financial solvency of the healthcare institutions.

The issue of ethics has become more relevant than at any point in time. Health care services have a special moral quality. The purpose of healthcare services includes saving lives, preventing or relieving suffering, preventing and curing disease and disability and ameliorating the consequences of disease when it cannot be prevented or cured. Few people can be morally comfortable with the idea that some people should be denied access to health care that might relieve their suffering or save their lives because they cannot pay for it.

The field of medical ethics which focused on the moral responsibility of a physician to a patient was not adequate to address the ethical aspects emerging out of the changed context. With more stakeholders, such as medical devices companies, pharmaceutical companies, diagnostic clinics, insurance companies, clinical trial organizations and other service providers entering the field, there was a need to expand the scope of the definition of ethics within the field of medicine.