Rationing Empathy

Rationing conscience

Decisions about allocation of limited healthcare resources are frequently controversial. These decisions are usually based on careful analysis of medical, scientific and health economic evidence. Yet, decisions are also necessarily based on value judgements. There may be differing views among health professionals about how to allocate resources or how to evaluate existing evidence. In specific ...

'Hydraulic' rationing

The problem of distributing a single homogeneous divisible good among a variable set of agents, or the ‘rationing problem,’ is analyzed. Examples of rationing include bankruptcy, taxation, claims settlement, cost allocation, surplus sharing, and social choice problems. Agents are described by their personal characteristics, or types. A type may be an agent’s utility function, ]] preference orde...

Rationing time.

M rs. W is my first patient of the afternoon. She is a new patient with no chief complaint, so the purpose of the visit is simply to establish care. I find out that Mrs. W lost her job and her health insurance six months ago and has not been treated for several chronic diseases for some time. She is part of a growing number of patients in our community who, because of the economic downturn, hav...

Administrative rationing and multiple equilibria

In this paper, we introduce non-interest profit/loss sharing (PLS) banks into a three-period overlapping generations model. Two types, (low- and high quality) investments are assumed and capital accumulation and level of output in the steady state is considered. Then, administrative rationing is introduced to the model. It is shown that the level of capital accumulation and output in equilibriu...

The Rationing of Patients