An ethical foundation for health care: an emergency medicine perspective. Ethics Committee, Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.

Abstract

1. What is health and health care? Health is a state of physical and mental well-being that facilitates the achievement of individual and societal goals. Good health over a lifetime is the comparative absence of pain and suffering, illness and disease, each of which could prevent people from pursuing their goals. Health care includes those services that provide adequate nutrition and shelter; sanitary, safe, unpolluted living and working conditions; personal medical services; and nonmedical personal and support services. The medical community can best address the area of personal medical services, which includes interventions to prevent disease, minimize morbidity from existing diseases, diagnose and cure illness, relieve pain and suffering, and provide education for the continued promotion of health. Society must also provide health care services such as adequate nutrition, shelter, and education about health care issues, including prevention that could result in reduced expenditures for curative services. 2. Is health care an ethical or legal right? At this time, there is no legal right to universal health care in the United States, although there is a patchwork of limited legislated rights to health care benefits for some citizens. Ethically, there is a right to health care; however, it is a limited right best expressed as a societal obligation to provide care rather than an open-ended individual right to receive any and all health care resources on demand. In restructuring our health care system, our society must identify the values that will serve as the foundation for our health care system. A health care system that stresses societal rather than individual priorities is essential.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)