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Rationing Medicine in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)

  • Chapter
Compelled Compassion

Part of the book series: Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society ((CIBES))

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Abstract

Major alterations in the United States health-care system will be necessary in the coming decades if we are to avert a crisis of immense proportions. Many seemingly unrelated demographic, social, and technological trends in reality constitute a concatenation that promises to accentuate traditional dilemmas in medical policy making. The aging population, the proliferation of high-cost biomedical technologies designed primarily to prolong life, conventional retroactive reimbursement schemes by third-party payers, and the realization that health-care costs are outstripping society’s perceived ability to pay all lead to pressures for expanded public action. At the same time, social institutions appear both unable and unwilling to make the difficult decisions in this area traditionally viewed as outside the public arena.

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Authors
  1. Robert H. Blank
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Biomedical Ethics, University of Minnesota, St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA

    Arthur L. Caplan

  2. University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Robert H. Blank

  3. St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota

    Janna C. Merrick

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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Blank, R.H. (1992). Rationing Medicine in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). In: Caplan, A.L., Blank, R.H., Merrick, J.C. (eds) Compelled Compassion. Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0409-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0409-1_6

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-6749-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-0409-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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