Extra Welfarism In Health Care

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This paper will review and critically appraise the use of welfarism theory both classical and ‘extra’ welfarism in health care today. First an overview of classical welfarism will be given and a discussion into the weaknesses seen in this approach. Thus secondly how this encouraged some economists to develop an “extra” welfarist school of thought. Thirdly an evaluation of this approach is given and in this paper leads to concluding that in practice this still doesn’t seem to provide an optimal solution to the way in which health care is considered.
Welfare economics is concerned with the maximisation of utility. It’s based on the Paretian principles that individuals are the best judges of their own well-being and that a situation is only better …show more content…

Where it can take into account different non-utility attributes and states of individuals. Brouwer et al 2008 define extra welfarism in the following way: (i) it permits the use of outcomes other than utility; (ii) it permits the use of sources of valuation other than the affected individuals; (iii) it permits the weighting of outcomes (whether utility or other) according to principles that need not be preference based and (iv) it permits interpersonal comparisons of well-being in a variety of dimensions, thus enabling movement beyond Paretian economics. Although they define extra-welfarism as being able to encompass various outcomes they do acknowledge that health is the predominant outcome associated with extra-welfarism. This being justified due to it being considered valuable for its own sake as an essential characteristic of human beings. It is not limited to the extent that it yields utility in that it is seen to contribute to the capacity for welfare, which leads back to the concept of capability. In this theoretical manner the outcome has the potential to be some other characteristic of individuals; whatever the policy maker (authoritative decision maker) deems relevant or necessary. Theoretically then extra-welfarism allows for a large evaluative spectrum yet it cannot be ignored that in reality the application of …show more content…

Hence, health maximisation policies will not necessarily maximise utility and social welfare (World bank). Whilst extra-welfarists would argue people’s lack of the ability to desire adequately due to their expectations being conditioned due to their social environment or personal experience limiting their opportunities (Mooney). “individuals need to be protected from their own foolishness” is an argument supplied by Rice (1998, apud Birch & Donaldson). Whereby a lack of information or a genuine ‘selfish’ desire to maximise personal utility regarding the health care market can be detrimental to society. Perhaps, in instances where some individuals may not favour the vaccination approach contrary to the population’s best interest or in situations where outbreak of harmful infections require quarantine but certain individuals may not wish to confer with the isolation practice again against the interest of society (Brayan Viegas Seixas). Together meaning the emphasis shouldn’t be on the demand for health or health care but the

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