Ted Schrecker
Interrogating scarcity : how to think about ‘resource-scarce settings’
Schrecker, Ted
Authors
Abstract
The idea of resource scarcity permeates health ethics and health policy analysis in various contexts. However, health ethics inquiry seldom asks—as it should—why some settings are ‘resource-scarce’ and others not. In this article I describe interrogating scarcity as a strategy for inquiry into questions of resource allocation within a single political jurisdiction and, in particular, as an approach to the issue of global health justice in an interconnected world. I demonstrate its relevance to the situation of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with brief descriptions of four elements of contemporary globalization: trade agreements; the worldwide financial marketplace and capital flight; structural adjustment; imperial geopolitics and foreign policy. This demonstration involves not only health care, but also social determinants of health. Finally, I argue that interrogating scarcity provides the basis for a new, critical approach to health policy at the interface of ethics and the social sciences, with specific reference to market fundamentalism as the value system underlying contemporary globalization.
Citation
Schrecker, T. (2013). Interrogating scarcity : how to think about ‘resource-scarce settings’. Health Policy and Planning, 28(4), 400-409. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czs071
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Publication Date | Jul 1, 2013 |
Deposit Date | Jun 21, 2013 |
Publicly Available Date | Jun 28, 2013 |
Journal | Health Policy and Planning |
Print ISSN | 0268-1080 |
Electronic ISSN | 1460-2237 |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 28 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 400-409 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czs071 |
Keywords | Resource allocation, Scarcity, Health ethics, Globalization, Justice. |
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Published by Oxford University Press in association with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine © The Author 2012; all rights reserved.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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