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The Oregonian ICU: Multi-Tiered Monetarized Morality in Health Insurance Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Michael A. Rie
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Extract

Resource finitude, cost containment, and a purchaser monopsony market have created public concern-about the moral and legal responsibility for quality assurance in health plans. Resource allocation and standards of care represent a clash of moral values in intensive care treatment. This essay advances a procedural model, based on legislation passed in Oregon, that could govern the incorporation of private sector health insurance plans in Oregon to assure democratic input from consumers, providers, and employers into a limited vision of individual entitlement to consume futile or inappropriate care in intensive care units (ICUs). The model, which I call the Oregonian ICU, presumes that rationing of care is implicit and not publicly disclosed under managed care. It focuses on maximizing the quality of limited benefits available in the basic managed care insurance tier. Limitations to futile and inappropriate care are developed on the basis of morally weighted prognostic scoring systems that inform the creation of negotiated private sector contracts.

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Article
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Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 149 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1995

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