When a patient is diagnosed with a rare diagnosis or a mortal disease, medicine and life-prolonging treatment should be offered. However, the required medicines and treatments are often expensive, and economic resources are limited. This presents public health care with some hard choices. There is a strong moral justification not to deny treatment because of cost; however, given limited resource within public health care we may have to choose whom to treat or whether to cut costs within other needed services instead.
With this conference, the Nordic Committee for Bioethics aims to highlight fundamental ethical principles that should guide the priority settings in the modern health care. The conference is aimed at medical professionals, policy makers, academics and the general public, and is a follow-up of the NCBio workshop "Hard Choices in Nordic Health Care – Expensive treatments and priority settings", held in Stockholm in November 2015.
Please note that the seminar is free of charge, but participants pay their own travel and accommodation costs. The conference is organised in cooperation with the Swedish Society of Medicine.
Preliminary programme:
08:30 Opening and welcome, NCBio Chair Professor Kirsten Kyvik
08:40 Introductory remarks and presentation of the programme, Local host Professor Ingemar Engström
Session 1: What are the goals of medicine?
08:45 Autonomy and trust in bioethics, Professor Maartje Schermer, ErasmusMC Rotterdam
09:15 The nature of suffering and the goals of medicine, Professor Fredrik Svenaeus, Södertörn University
09:45 Discussion
10:00 Coffee
Session 2: Needs or demands as driving forces in health care
10:30 Justice and priority settings in health care, Professor/Director Angus Dawson, University of Sydney
11:00 The cake and its bits: can universal health care systems survive (without) ethical priority setting?, Professor Christian Munthe, University of Gothenburg
11:20 Health care as a commodity or a sign of solidarity?, Professor Bettine Lemann Kristiansen, University of Aarhus
11:40 Discussion
12:00 Lunch
Session 3: Does age matter?
13:00 All men and women are born equal, Professor Greg Bognar, Stockholm University
13:30 The question of age in priority settings, Professor Ole Frithjof Norheim, University of Bergen
14:00 Discussion
14:30 Coffee
Session 4: How much is a life worth?
15:00 The place of economics in priority settings, Professor Samuli Saarni, University of Helsinki
15:30 Is there a limit to health costs, Professor Gudmundur Heidar Frimannsson, University of Akureyri
16:00 Discussion
Final lecture:
16:30 Who should make the hard choices in health care, Director Birgir Jakobsson, Directorate of Health, Iceland
Venue: The Swedish Society of Medicine, Klara Östra Kyrkogata 10, 101 35 Stockholm
You will find more information about the conference at ncbio.org