title: A Good Samaritan inspired foundation for a fair health care system.
abstract: Distributive justice on the income and on the service aspects is the most vexing modern day problem for the creation and maintenance of an all inclusive health care system. A pervasive problem of all current schemes is the lack of effective cost control, which continues to result in increasing burdens for all public and private stakeholders. This proposal posits that the responsibility and financial obligation to achieve an ideal outcome of equal and affordable access and benefits for all citizens is misplaced. The Good Samaritan demonstrated basic ethical principles, which are revisited, elaborated and integrated into a new approach to health care. The participants are limited to individual contributors and beneficiaries and organized as a citizen carried, closed, independent, and self-sufficient self-governing cooperative for their own and the benefit of a minority of disadvantaged health care consumers. The government assumes oversight, provides arbitration, enforces democratic decision making, a scheme of progressive taxation, a separate and transparent accounting system, and a balance between income and reinvestment in health care. The results are a fair distribution of cost, its effective control, and increased individual motivation to take on responsibility for personal health as a private good and a sharpened focus towards community health. At the sociopolitical level the government as well as employers are released from the inappropriate burden of catering to individual health.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, NY, USA. cfran@frontiernet.net
authors.forename: Elmar H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Frangenberg
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics / Q000941:ethics*; D005102:Health Expenditures; D006291:Health Policy / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D028701:Patient Rights / Q000941:ethics*; D012935:Social Justice / Q000191:economics / Q000941:ethics*; D014481:United States