The Macro-Allocation of Health Care Resources

Abstract

There is little doubt that there is greater concern today in most countries about health care policy than there has been for a long time. I think that the reason for this concern is fairly evident. On the one hand, the tremendous rise in the cost of health care has made every society look at ways to control the cost of that care. At the very same time, there is a great concern that this control of costs not interfere either with the quality of health care or with the growing access of the less fortunate to that health care. So the current discussion of health care policy reflects, I submit, a conflict between the value of controlling health care costs, on the one hand, and the values of maintaining a high quality of health care and of maintaining an appropriate level of access of all citizens to health care, on the other hand.