Setting Limits Fairly

The central idea for this volume is that we lack consensus on principles for allocating resources and in the absence of such a consensus we must rely on a fair decision-making process for setting limits on health care. The authors characterize key elements of this process in a variety of health care contexts where such decisions are made - decisions about insurance coverage for new technologies, pharmacy benefit management, the design of physician incentives, and contracting for mental health care by public agencies - and they connect the problem in the US with the same problem in other countries. They provide a cogent analysis of the current situation, lucidly review the usual candidate solutions, and describe their own approach, which represents a clear advance in thinking.

"In the next decade, every country will face very hard choices about how to allocate scarce medical resources. There is no consensus about what substative principles should be used to establish priorities for allocations. Instead, we will need fair procedures. Debate will focus on what those procedures should be. Daniels and Sabin's accountability for reasonableness and illuminating case studies will be invaluable in furthering that debate."--the New England Journal of Medicine, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D. "...keeps the reader engaged and helps the understanding of the criteria."--Doody's "...offers a detailed procedural approach to limit setting where primarily the question of legitimacy is settled."--Nursing Ethics