Journal article
Meaning, medicine, and merit
- Abstract:
- Given the inevitability of scarcity, should public institutions ration healthcare resources so as to prioritize those who contribute more to society? Intuitively, we may feel that this would be somehow inegalitarian. I argue that the egalitarian objection to prioritizing treatment on the basis of patients’ usefulness to others is best thought of as semiotic: i.e. as having to do with what this practice would mean, convey, or express about a person’s standing. I explore the implications of this conclusion when taken in conjunction with the observation that semiotic objections are generally flimsy, failing to identify anything wrong with a practice as such and having limited capacity to generalize beyond particular contexts.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 277.3KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1017/S0953820819000360
Authors
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Journal:
- Utilitas More from this journal
- Volume:
- 32
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 90-107
- Publication date:
- 2019-09-23
- Acceptance date:
- 2019-06-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1741-6183
- ISSN:
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0953-8208
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:1031983
- UUID:
-
uuid:103a80f1-2ab5-40a3-99d1-8f39c40fa99f
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1031983
- Source identifiers:
-
1031983
- Deposit date:
-
2019-07-15
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Cambridge University Press
- Copyright date:
- 2019
- Rights statement:
- © Cambridge University Press 2019
- Notes:
- This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online from Cambridge University Press at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820819000360
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