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. 2016 Jun 9;11(6):e0157018.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0157018. eCollection 2016.

Who Shall Not Be Treated: Public Attitudes on Setting Health Care Priorities by Person-Based Criteria in 28 Nations

Jana Rogge  1 , Bernhard Kittel  2
Affiliations

Who Shall Not Be Treated: Public Attitudes on Setting Health Care Priorities by Person-Based Criteria in 28 Nations

Jana Rogge et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The principle of distributing health care according to medical need is being challenged by increasing costs. As a result, many countries have initiated a debate on the introduction of explicit priority regulations based on medical, economic and person-based criteria, or have already established such regulations. Previous research on individual attitudes towards setting health care priorities based on medical and economic criteria has revealed consistent results, whereas studies on the use of person-based criteria have generated controversial findings. This paper examines citizens' attitudes towards three person-based priority criteria, patients' smoking habits, age and being the parent of a young child. Using data from the ISSP Health Module (2011) in 28 countries, logistic regression analysis demonstrates that self-interest as well as socio-demographic predictors significantly influence respondents' attitudes towards the use of person-based criteria for health care prioritization. This study contributes to resolving the controversial findings on person-based criteria by using a larger country sample and by controlling for country-level differences with fixed effects models.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Proportion of support for prioritization by smoking habit, age and parental status as subordinated priority criteria by country.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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