Ethical Issues in Healthcare: An Aging Population Discussion

This discussion post explores the ethical challenges associated with an aging population within the healthcare system. It addresses the increasing number and cost of care for the elderly, highlighting ethical dilemmas such as autonomy, dignity, and resource allocation. The post examines the government's role in healthcare policy, including fund allocation and the potential for ethical conflicts when balancing different societal needs. It delves into ethical standards like justice, right, merit, and need, considering how these principles apply to healthcare resource distribution. The post also references relevant studies and reports, such as the CDC projections and Hayutin, Dietz, and Mitchell's report, to support its analysis of the ethical landscape surrounding the aging population's healthcare needs.

Ethical issue with Aging Population
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Issues with Growing Aging Population
For every nation, healthcare is an important aspect to review. If to talk about the United
States, the government makes some healthcare policies to govern the subjective aspect. In the
presented essay, the focus will be made on one of the challenges that the healthcare industry is
facing these days. The chosen challenge is well known as Aging Population. Not only in the
United States but in other nations also, some ethical challenges are there which exist in respect to
Aging Population.
The USA, however, ranked as one of the top countries of the world that have the elderly
population (Haseltine, 2018). The lead challenge is Autonomy and dignity (Zhou & Salvendy,
2017). The ethical issue involved is to check whether the principle of maximum use of autonomy
is extended to authorization of self-destruction. Autonomy is the right to decide the best about
oneself (Velasquez, 2013). In addition to the rights, the same carries some responsibilities too. In
the recent times, such population is being a concern for the government, as the same has to spend
a lot of money on such a population. In addition to this, caring of such population is expected to
be a concern for the healthcare industry itself in the coming future because of heavy expenditure.
The industry would only be eligible to provide care to such population if the government will
reduce the cost of medicines.
Ethical dilemmas
Moving the focus towards other ethical dilemmas which industry faces in relation to this
group of population, this is to mention that this population needs an affordable healthcare
facility. The government of nation needs to develop a policy, which consists a justified fund
allocation. Now, the ethical issue which government faces is to check out the most appropriate

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source of the fund? As per the report titled as “New realities of an Older America” at the age of
65, most of the people start facing financial difficulties (Hayutin, Dietz & Mitchell, 2010).
Further, because of the poor monetary policies of the government, the financial problems of
these people enhance. In such cases, the government is required to develop such healthcare
policies, which are in favour of elder people and are able to provide them financial support
regarding their health conditions. In order to provide more funds to a healthcare program, the
government is required to decrease the expenditure on another program such as education,
environment protection and so on. This leads an ethical dilemma for the government as resources
are limited and sector of expenditures are so many in numbers. Government while dealing with
healthcare policies faces an ethical issue of allocation of limited funds to unlimited projects. On
the different side, if the cost of medical expenditure would not be reduced then it will be so hard
to take care of elderly people by a new generation (Crippen & Barnato, 2011)
Further, the government needs to increase the tax rates to collect additional funds for the
services of elderly people. If the government would not charge addition public taxes, the same
will not be able to provide cheap services to the aging population. This circumstance again
creates an ethical issue for the government. Reduction in the cost for one group of the population
and increment in the same for another group give rise to the conflict of ethical interest. On one
side, it is unethical to impose the unnecessary taxes on the general and young public with the
purpose to collect additional funds. Similarly, on the different side not providing sufficient and
affordable services to elderly people is also an ethical issue. The ethical issue is that whether
being elderly, the group should have priority in resource allocation. This gives birth to the issue
of justice and morality between generations.
Ethical standards

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Ethical standards play a vital role in solving the dilemmas related to budget allocation
when it comes to the healthcare and aging population. Many of the ethical standards are there
which needs to be considered while determining resource allocation. Nevertheless if to check in
real, most of them seem to be unreasonable. To address the ethical issue related to autonomy and
dignity, another ethical standard is there. This standard says that in general, patients have the
right to decide that what is in their best interest, but such interest can be limit in order to provide
a safeguard to the right of others. The ethical standard that should be used while allocating
resources to healthcare is Justice. According to this standard healthcare facility must be available
to all the groups of society irrespective of the race, gender, and sex of the patient (Smith, 2008).
Another standards are right, merit, priority and need (Harper 2010). Further, while determining
the way in which resources should be allocated, the government needs to consider the interest of
all the social groups and not only the aging population. It means the elderly people must not give
priority in resource allocation just because of their old age.

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References
Crippen, D., & Barnato, A. (2011). The Ethical Implications of Health Spending: Death and
other Expensive Conditions. The Journal Of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 39(2), 121-129.
doi: 10.1111/j.1748-720x.2011.00582.
Harper, S. (2010). The capacity of social security and health care institutions to adapt to an
ageing world. International Social Security Review, 63(3‐4), 177-196.
Haseltine, W. (2018). Aging Populations Will Challenge Healthcare Systems All Over The
World. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2018/04/02/aging-
populations-will-challenge-healthcare-systems-all-over-the-world/
Hayutin A. M, Dietz M., & Mitchell L. (2010). New realities of an Older America. Retrieved
from: http://longevity.stanford.edu/2010/11/19/new-realities/
Smith, G. (2008). The Elderly and Health Care Rationing. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:
10.2139/ssrn.1121439
Velasquez, M. (2013). Philosophy: A Text with Readings. USA: Cengage Learning.
Zhou, J., & Salvendy, G. (Eds.). (2017). Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Aging,
Design and User Experience: Third International Conference, ITAP 2017, Held as Part
of HCI International 2017, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 9-14, 2017, Proceedings (Vol.
10297). Springer.