Adaptation to illness, and its relevance for distribution in health care, has been the subject of vigorous debate. In this paper I examine an aspect of this discussion that seems so far to have been overlooked: that some illnesses are difficult, or even impossible, to adapt to. This matters because adaptation reduces suffering. Illness severity is a priority setting criterion in several countries. When considering severity, we are interested in the extent to which an illness makes a person worse-off. I argue that no plausible theory of well-being can disregard suffering when determining to what extent someone is worse-off in terms of health. We should accept, all else equal, that adapting to an illness makes the illness less severe by reducing suffering. Accepting a pluralist theory of well-being allows us to accept my argument, while still making room for the possibility that adaptation is sometimes, all things considered, bad. Finally, I argue that we should conceptualize adaptability as a feature of illness, and thereby account for adaptation on a group level for the purposes of priority setting.
Koronapandemien har synliggjort nødvendigheten av prioriteringer i helsetjenesten vår. Helseprioriteringer i Norge skal gjøres etter de tre kriteriene nytte, ressurs og alvorlighetsgrad. Nytte-og ressurskriteriene utgjør til sammen et kostnadseffektivitetskriterium: Høyere prioritet tilfaller tiltak som skaper mye helse med få ressurser. Alvorlighetskriteriet innebaerer at en mer alvorlig tilstand kan og skal prioriteres høyere enn kostnadseffektiviteten alene tilsier. I denne artikkelen undersøker vi det norske alvorlighetskriteriet for helseprioriteringer i møte med koronaepidemien i Norge. Vi beskriver utviklingen av alvorlighetskriteriet i den norske prioriteringsdiskursen. Videre diskuterer vi hvordan koronaepidemien fremhever uenigheter og tvetydigheter rundt begrepet «alvorlighet» hva gjelder dødsrisiko, komorbiditet og hastegrad. Vi drøfter også hvordan den norske pandemiberedskapen passer inn i dette landskapet og etterlyser en klarere forståelse av alvorlighet i skillet mellom behandling og forebygging av sykdom. Til sist drøfter vi om det norske alvorlighetskriteriet for helseprioriteringer også kan vaere relevant for prioriteringer utenfor helsevesenet.
Illness severity is a priority setting criterion in several countries. Age seems to matter when considering severity, but perhaps not small age differences. In the following article we consider Small Differences (SD): small differences in age are not relevant when considering differential illness severity. We show that SD cannot be accommodated within utilitarian, prioritarian or egalitarian theories. Attempting to accommodate SD by postulating a threshold model becomes exceedingly complex and self-defeating. The only way to accommodate SD seems to be to accept some form of relevance view, where some age differences are irrelevant. This view can accommodate SD, but at the expense of consistent priority orderings. Severity thus becomes unsuitable for systematic decision-making. We argue that SD should be dismissed and that we should accept a continuous relationship between severity of illness and age.
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