27 Oct How Oregon has/ or hasn’t ethically rationed care during the Covid pandemic

This assignment will familiarize you with how Oregon has/ or hasn’t ethically rationed care during the Covid pandemic. Assignment Tasks: 1) Read the article, Oregon Health Authority punts questions of how to ration care in a crisis. 2) Meet with your group member(s) to discuss the article and the questions below and answer each. 3) One member from each assigned group for Lab#2 must post responses to the following by the due date. Peer responses are not due this week, but extra credit will be rewarded for thoughtful responses to the posts by other groups that add to the discussion! In a pandemic, the most seriously ill patients with the lowest probability of being saved might be left untreated because their care would require too many resources with little prospect of recovery. This illustrates a conflict between the common good and the best interests of individual patients. What other conflicts are we seeing presented in the article above? (List at least two with examples.) Should we aim to maximize the number of lives or, alternatively, the number of life years saved? This can also raise questions about the quality of those lives and the years lived. Is it ever appropriate to make allocation decisions based on the quality of life or life years?