Should a national health care program pay for the custodial care of the elderly?

A CLAIM OF A RIGHT TO HEALTH CARE

I

From: Munson, Ronald. INTERVENTION AND REFLECTION.6th ED.,Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company,2000 ., Page 863, Decision Scenario 6

“Let me explain it to you, Mr. Faust,” Charles Young said. “Although your wife is covered by Medicare, we cannot pay for the care she is receiving in the nursing home. As an Alzheimer’s patient, she’s getting custodial care, and that is explicitly excluded from Medicare coverage. Do you have any insurance?”

“My wife and I both have coverage through my job. Bu the benefits office told me exactly the same thing. My policy doesn’t cover long-term, chronic, or custodial care.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Young said. “That means that you’ll have to pay the total cost of care yourself.”

“Where can a sales rep get that kind of money?” Mr. Faust said. “A nursing home will cost me forty or fifty thousand dollars a year. If I sell our house and use all our savings, I could pay for maybe a year or two, but then I wouldn’t have anything to live on myself. Where could I live? How could I eat?”

“The only alternative is to divest yourself of your assets so that you cannot be held legally responsible for paying for your wife’s care. The you and she can both get assistance under the Medicaid program.”

“Then I have to literally become a pauper before I can get any help?”

“I’m sorry to say that’s true.”

Critical Thinking

Use any single (one) ethical principle from the group we have covered to support your position on each of these three issues. Hopefully it is the principle that you have decided is closest to your values and will use in making moral choices. If you are tempted to use different ethical principles for each of the three issues then you are an ethical egoist and you should use that principle on all three issues.

1. Should a national health care program pay for the custodial care of the elderly? Defend your position using ETHICAL principles.

2.Should family members be required by law to help pay the health care expenses of the other family members? Defend your position using ETHICAL principles.

3. Should people with incomes adequate to cover their health care expenses or to buy private health insurance be ineligible to participate in a national health insurance plan? Defend your position using ETHICAL principles.

Use any single (one) ethical principle from the group we have covered to support your position on each of these three issues. Hopefully it is the principle that you have decided is closest to your values and will use in making moral choices. If you are tempted to use different ethical principles for each of the three issues then you are an ethical egoist and you should use that principle on all three issue