If you were the chairperson of a medical ethics committee faced with the decisio
ID: 2746232 • Letter: I
Question
If you were the chairperson of a medical ethics committee faced with the decision concerning which of the following patients would receive a heart transplant, what decision would you make and what justification would you give to the families of each of the patients for making that decision?
Patient 1: A seventy-six-year-old nonsmoker with good pulmonary and renal function is a good candidate for a heart transplant, and his life expectancy without the transplant is one month. The patient has the resources to pay cash for the transplant procedure and follow-up care.
Patient 2: A forty-six-year-old unemployed auto worker with a history of alcohol use and smoking suffered a heart attack and will die within one month if he does not receive a heart transplant. The patient does not have health insurance, nor does he have the resources to pay for the procedure.
Explanation / Answer
From a medical ethics point of view Percival, (2014) explains that deciding who receives medical attention on government facilities in U.S is coming to the crisis between the poor and the rich. The poor seems to be the most affected on meeting the cost of maintaining their cost of health maintenance. The government does not mostly consider the attention of the poor patients kindly seeking the medical care. This is because the government argues that such people tend to make the government poor because they will not bring back any possible profit afterward.
But such a decision on of the two patients on the medical ethics health committee will rely on the following justification. First the board will save the life of the second patient reason because the patient can only depend on the government programs for his medical attention and procedure. So as the chairman I will direct the committee to have the transplant in the second patient done and be put on government programs of which the condition after the operation he will quit alcohol and smoking.
For the first patient, the best decision is to request he find another option of accessing health facility. Reason because the patient is well up financially so he can meet the cost of his medication. Also, he has survived another transplant and age factor will be a matter of probability to survive another procedure.