Discuss how does a medical crisis raise questions about the nature of public health care? Do state’s have a moral responsibility to provide universal health care to its citizens in order to be capable of addressing a medical crisis?

Situation: you are a doctor in a leading research hospital. As a result of coronavirus, the hospital becomes overloaded with patients and there is a shortage of beds and respirators. Because of this, there are more patients in the emergency room than medical equipment to respond to the situation. There are a 1000 respirators and 1500 beds, but 2000 patients who are in need of immediate treatment.

Ethical Response: As the doctor, you are in a difficult ethical situation. You must decide what to do. Is it ethical to allow some patients to die in order to save a larger number of them? Or should you do your hippocratic duty and try to save them all? If you cannot save all of them and some must die, is this morally justified? Furthermore, is it justified for governments to quaratine people and self-isolate? Do state’s have the right to order lockdowns of cities in order to address a health crisis? This is the debate between consequentialists and deontology, which you can learn about from the videos.

Larger Debate: how does a medical crisis raise questions about the nature of public health care? Do state’s have a moral responsibility to provide universal health care to its citizens in order to be capable of addressing a medical crisis? For this section, I would like you to compare and contrast the US health care system with the UK’s medical system, the NHS. Does a system of free, universally accessible health care like the NHS in the UK make it possible to easily address a medical crisis? The wikipedia page on the NHS should help you here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service Please only write one full paragraph for this section

Structure: Please start your introduction with a clear thesis statement (i.e. “I will argue that it is morally justifiable to allow some patients to die in order to save a larger number of them” or “I will argue that it is never justifiable to allow someone to die in order to save others”). State this in one sentence; this is your thesis statement. Develop your thesis in three body paragraphs, and formulate a clear conclusion. I would like to see you engage with some of the videos and readings that you have read for this class.