Oregon's decision to curtail funding for organ transplantation.
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BACKGROUND: Health care for the medically indigent under the federal Medicaid system often provides care for only a fraction (ranging from 20% to 80%) of the poor who nominally qualify for care. Oregon has developed a unique system that replaces such a system with one that provides a comprehensive complement of medical care for all the poor but limits the care to conditions and procedures on a prioritized list. METHODS: The Health Services Commission, a group of physicians, nurses, and public representatives, developed a list of over 740 diagnoses-treatment pairs and, with considerable public input, prioritized them in order of importance. The principal values used to develop the list were the prevention of death and the cost of the disease and its treatment. In the final ordering of the diagnosis-treatment pairs, public health and prevention of morbidity was also considered. Cancer diagnoses, and indeed all diseases, were not singled out for special consideration in this process. The Oregon Health Plan was implemented in 1994 with funds to cover 606 of 743 listed diagnoses. Diagnoses involving cancer were nearly all covered within these 606 items. The principal exception was coverage for Curative Treatment for Cancer when the likelihood for success was less than 5%. RESULTS: The prioritized list has met its goal of comprehensive medical care for the indigent population. The number of medically uninsured Oregonians has fallen significantly, and there have been few complaints about the Plan. Cancer care has been delivered to Oregon Health Plan clients with very few complaints or appeals of decisions concerning coverage. Palliative care is provided under a number of covered lines, as are curative medical and surgical treatment. CONCLUSIONS: The Oregon Health Plan represents an alternative method for delivering medical care, including the full range of cancer care, to the indigent. As there are limited funds in all state systems, the citizens of Oregon have decided to provide care using a prioritized list to allow provision of medical care to the entire Medicaid population. Such a plan represents a viable alternative to the more common method of providing everything but only to a limited number of poor citizens.
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How do we decide who should receive the benefits that medical science has to offer? One approach to this decision process, that used by the state of Oregon, is described: who and what are covered, and how health care is financed and delivered, are considered. Oregon's priorities were set on the basis of broad consensus. The objective of health care reform, it was agreed, is to improve, maintain, or restore health--not universal coverage, access to health care, or cost containment. A Health Services Commission was created to consider clinical effectiveness and, through public involvement, to attempt to integrate social values into the priority list. Oregon's legislature can use the list to develop an overall health policy which recognises that health can be maintained only if investments in several related areas are balanced.
Recognition of the need to ration care has focused attention on the concept of "basic care." It is often thought that care that is "basic" is also morally prior. This article questions that premise in light of the usual definitions of "basic." Specifically, it argues that Oregon's rationing scheme, which defines "basic" in terms of cost-effective care, fails to pay sufficient attention to important ethical principles such as justice.
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Increasing emphasis on obtaining consumer opinion in relation to needs assessment and decision making has led to interest in this country about the Oregon experiment in the US. Despite controversies over the efficacy of such approaches, it seems likely that future emphasis will be placed on devising systematic means of gathering information about societal preferences for care. In two articles, Ann Bowling reviews the evidence from America and relates it to the ongoing changes in the British health service. Part 1 introduces the ideas behind the Oregon experiment and examines similar initiatives in the UK.
Increasing emphasis on obtaining consumer opinion in relation to needs assessment and decision making has led to interest in this country about the Oregon experiment in the US. In spite of controversies over the efficacy of such approaches, it seems likely that future emphasis will be placed on devising systematic means of gathering information about societal preferences for care. In two articles, Ann Bowling reviews the evidence from America and relates it to the ongoing changes in the British health service. Part 2 examines the methods, results and controversies generated by the Oregon experiment.
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The "grassroots turn" in bioethical discussions about justice in allocation of health care resources has attracted a great deal of support; in the absence of a convincing theory of justice in rationing, democratic decisionmaking concerning priority setting emerges with a kind of inevitability. Yet there remain suspicions about this approach--most importantly, worries about the socially corrosive impact of explicit, public decisionmaking that in effect sets a price on the lives of persons. These worries have been quieted, particularly by the work of Leonard Fleck, but not altogether stilled. I explore more sympathetically the ideals to which concerns about public rationing somewhat dimly respond, and suggest constraints on priority setting discussions which might accommodate those ideals rather better.