EQUITY IN HEALTH SERVICES

[摘要] It is demonstrated that the increase in the use of physician and hospital services between 1963 and 1970 ... had no impact on health indicators as measured by disability days. It is often argued from results like these that a comprehensive national health insurance scheme would be a misallocation of resources in the public sector, if the objective is to improve health levels. Rather, it is argued, it would be a wiser policy to allocate fewer resources to a comprehensive curing system and more to programs designed to inculcate healthful life styles.Life styles do not lend themselves easily to manipulated change, at least in the short haul. Public opinion will dictate that the health services delivery system will have to cope with the deleterious effects of prevailing life styles somehow. I do not believe there will ever be a puritanic majority who are so healthy and ascetic that they can legislate against a minority who are hedonistic and unhealthy.... Differentiating between life style saints and sinners is then not a tenable public policy. National health insurance will be designed therefore to serve both the prudent and the profligate, a policy I would regard as equitable.

[学科分类] 儿科学