The problem of how health-care resources should be allocated or apportioned,so that they are distributed in both the most just and most efficient way,is not a new one.Every health system in an economically developed society is faced with the need to decide what proportion of the community's total resources should be spent on health-care,how resources are to be apportioned,what disease and disabilities and which forms of treatment are to be given priority,which members of the community are to be given special consideration in respect of their health needs, and which forms of treatment are the most cost-effective.
what is new that,from the 1950s onwards,there have been certain general changes in outlook about the finitude of resource as a whole of health-care resources in particulars,as well as more specific changes regarding the clentele of health-care resources and the cost to the community of those resources.Thus,in the 1950s and 1960s there emergened an awarness in Western societies that resources for the provision of fossial fuel energy were finite and exhaustible and that the capacity of nature or the environment to sustain economic development and population was also finite.In other words,we became aware of the obvious fact that there were limits to growth.The new consciousness that there were also severe limits to health-care resources was part of this general revelation of the obvious.Looking back,it now seems quite incridible that in the national health systems that emerged in many countries in the years immediately after the 1939-45 World War,it was assumed without question that all the basic health needs of any community could be satisfied,at least in principle,the invisible hand of economic progress would provide.
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