Ethical Issues With an Aging Population

Introduction

When providing care to boomers, health professionals are often confronted with ethical issues particularly when deciding whether to provide care over economic concerns for an aging patient. The US government is currently pumping a lot of resources in the health sector for the young people. However, the growth in the number of older citizens makes it expensive to provide care for this population. Recent research predicts that failure to initiate reforms to the current health care policies so that it caters to this growing aging population will result to expensive care for boomers (Crippen & Barnato, 2011).

The Body

The aging population needs an end of life care that they are comfortable with and one that they can afford. This population is deficient for financial security after retirement at the age of 65 (Hayutin, Dietz & Mitchell, 2010). Therefore, more than any other population, they require financial aid from the government. However, health professionals are inclined to distribute hospital resources to the people who need it most. Consider a situation where a hospital with one available life-sustaining machine has two patients who need it, one who is 80 years old and the other 30 years. In such a scenario, the health professional is confronted with the ethical dilemma of if foregoing life-sustaining treatment for the 80-year-old is a form of killing. One can, therefore, conclude that the nurse or physician could not be in such a situation if there were adequate resources to cater for both the older and younger population.

There is a need to adjust policy so that it corresponds with the new reality of the gradually increasing older population. Failure to make necessary adjustments will result in scarce resources to cater for the needs of this population in the future. Economic difficulties in the healthcare, in turn, put the health professionals in instances of an ethical dilemma as they have to decide when to apply euthanasia whether active, passive or assisted.  Passive euthanasia involving decisions on when to withdraw or withhold care from boomers is the most common ethical dilemma in healthcare today (Crippen & Barnato, 2011).