Money, Lives and Scarcity - How do people allocate healthcare resources?

医疗资源既可以用金钱来描述，也可以用健康结果来描述。然而，过去的研究表明，人们倾向于使用与市场规范一致的原则(如效率)来分配资金，但不愿这样做是为了“神圣的价值”，如健康和生命。这项研究考察了人们对医疗资源的分配偏好如何发生变化，这取决于分配政策是根据财务成本还是健康结果来制定的。它还探讨了人们是否根据他们对特定资源的稀缺程度对不同类型的医疗资源应用不同的分配策略。美国面临着遏制医疗支出的迫切需要。然而，公众对如何分配有限的医疗资源没有明显的共识，也没有就如何在分配中平衡效率和公平达成一致。这项拟议的研究通过考察政策框架和感知的稀缺性的影响，理清了公众对医疗保健分配的意见。这项研究对美国成年人的大规模全国概率样本进行了研究，并将为一个关键的卫生政策问题-有限的医疗资源的分配-提供丰富的民意数据。它还将为政策制定者提供指导，指导他们如何为不同的医疗资源设计不同的分配政策，以及如何制定分配政策，以获得公众对拟议政策的最大支持。

Healthcare resources can be described either in terms of money, or in terms of health outcomes. Yet, past research suggests that people tend to use principles consistent with market norms (e.g., efficiency) to allocate money, but are reluctant to do so for "sacred values" such as health and lives. This research examines how people's allocation preference for healthcare resources can shift, depending on whether allocation policies are framed in terms of financial cost or health outcomes. It also explores whether people apply different allocation strategies to different types of healthcare resources based on how scarce they perceive the particular resource to be. The United States faces an eminent need to curb healthcare spending. However, there is no obvious consensus among members of the public on how to allocate the limited healthcare resources, nor is there agreement about how to balance efficiency versus equality in such allocations. The proposed research untangles public opinions on healthcare allocation by examining the influence of policy framing and perceived scarcity. This research studies large scale national probaility samples of American adults and will provide rich data on public opinions for a critical health policy issue; the distribution of limited healthcare resources. It will also provide guidance to policymakers for how to design different allocation policies for different healthcare resources, as well as how to frame allocation policies to gain the most public support for proposed policies.