Oregon's Denial Disabilities and Quality of Life

Rationing that considers quality of life must be allowed to go even if at times it happens to disadvantage some persons with. Indeed, it is questionable whether we could ever devise a of priority-setting that was not informed in some measure by of quality of life. Disadvantage, however, is not the same thing the invidious discrimination the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act 1990] to preclude. We can live with some outcomes disadvantageous to some with disabilities -- so long as quality of life measures adequately into account the judgments of those who experience disabling conditions first hand, and so long as any such disadvantages are significantly driven medical outcomes data and not disability per se. Nevertheless, the flags the Department of Health and Human Services saw in the Oregon plan for Medicaid and eventually more of its health care system were real flags. Properly qualified and interpreted, the questions about with the ADA that the department has asked raise important issues about the fairness of different methods of measuring of life for use in allocating health services. It is disturbing to see-the-board opponents of any and all rationing apparently get some of the's ear, and it must have been terribly maddening for Oregon not to have been consulted earlier about the department's potential, but the administration has reinserted an appropriate consideration the disadvantaged individual back into what might have become Oregon's too reflection of dominantly "communal" values.