The national politics of Oregon's rationing plan.

State model: Oregon. The ups and downs of Oregon's rationing plan.

Rationing medical care: rhetoric and reality in the Oregon Health Plan.

The Oregon Health Plan (OHP) has been widely heralded as an important innovation in medical care policy and rationing. Oregon's pioneering method of prioritizing funding for health care through systematic and public ranking of medical services has drawn substantial international interest. This paper reviews the experience of the Oregon plan since it began operation in 1994. We argue that widesp...

The which-hunt: assembling health technologies for assessment and rationing.

To rationalize and restrict health care spending, policy, makers in many jurisdictions have withdrawn insurance or funding for selected health care technologies. Numerous analytic frameworks and applied exercises have emerged to guide decisions about "which" services to cut. But in their focus on choice-making processes, these efforts have paid little attention to the problem of defining and di...

American perceptions of the British National Health Service: five myths.

This article explores five strong beliefs, or myths, held by Americans about the British National Health Service: (1) the NHS is socialized medicine; (2) widespread rationing occurs; (3) NHS patients have to face long waiting times; (4) the NHS does not offer free choice of provider; and (5) private medicine is taking over. The authors explore how ethnocentricity and American values have shaped...

On the Oregon trail: rationing health care.

The introduction of the purchaser-provider principle into the NHS will have at least one uncomfortable consequence perhaps not fully expected by its authors. It will direct public attention even more to decisions about the level and distribution of resources, both nationally and locally. In the past decisions about who should (and should not) get what medical treatment have been perceived, and ...