COVID-19 Is Forcing Us to Talk About Rationing Health Care in the U.S. Again. Could We Have Avoided This?

On Sept. 7, the country’s leading COVID-19 doctor issued a dire warning about the growing number of pandemic cases in the country, and the shrinking number of ICU beds available to care for the sickest people. Speaking on CNN, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief White House medical advisor, said we are “perilously close in certain areas of the country of getting so close to having full occupancy that you’re going to be in a situation where you’re going to have to make some tough choices.” Those tough choices, he admitted, include discussions about whether scarce resources should go to people who haven’t been vaccinated, and the difficult ethical questions about personal choice that rationing crises raise. Doctors and hospital administrators are making heart-breaking decisions about who gets access to the increasingly few ICU beds. Should vaccinated people take precedence? Should people who followed mask and social distancing recommendations be prioritized over people who flouted these public health guidelines? While Fauci said such factors should not factor into a person’s care, he acknowledged that faced with such difficult choices, inevitably, “there’s talk of that.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In some states, hospitals have already descended into the negative numbers for ICU beds, meaning they have more patients than beds available. In the U.S., as of Sept. 9, 80% of ICU beds are occupied, with 31% of th...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news