> Rationing access to healthcare by people's economic contribution to society is just as fair as any other sort of rationing you care to come up with.
What's the thought process for the "fairness" of income based rationing? This doesn't seem that rational from either utilitarian or deontological angles. From my perspective it's a very unfair strategy compared to providing equal care to all people.
There isn't an argument that income based rationing is fair. The argument is that there is no fair rationing process, but we have to pick one. Income at least encourages people to work for what they get.
How else do we ration healthcare? Best looking people first? Oldest first? Youngest first? They all have terrible edge cases that are as bad as richest first.
We can't give everybody what they need because that is physically impossible. I don't want to die, so if we are going by needs I need permanent life support :(. That isn't even slightly practical, so we can't do that either - someone has to do without.
We could directly build more hospitals, train more doctors, etc. It is hard to see what would really change - there would still be horrible stories about edge cases where the system failed and there would still be a great need for more people. We have to draw a line somewhere - why not here? If we can justify going beyond the economic equilibrium, at what point do we stop pouring money into the healthcare system? A serious question which in my view has no satisfactory answer.
What's the thought process for the "fairness" of income based rationing? This doesn't seem that rational from either utilitarian or deontological angles. From my perspective it's a very unfair strategy compared to providing equal care to all people.