The ‘Rule of Rescue’ in Medical Priority Setting: Ethical Plausibilities and Implausibilities

Abstract

Not infrequently, the so-called Rule of Rescue gets invoked as an allegedly self-evident constraint to the CBE-goal of maximizing health benefit with a given health budget. In this paper this constraint is critically analyzed. It will be argued that some of its implications are worth considering--but not the inherently vague Rule as such.