ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that justice, rather than consequences, is the morally appropriate reason why age should be considered one factor in allocating certain health resouces. Medicare's system of diagnosis-related groups for hospital reimbursement had, until recently, differential reimbursements based on age. A policy committed to using resources where they will do the most good might include the view that in cases where older people will not do as well with an intervention, age should be used as an indirect, approximating measure of where resources will do the most good. The arguments that appear most readily are grounded in appeals to the consequences of allocating on the basis of age. Some critics of the use of age buy the principle, but reject the moral calculation. Darnel Callahan's use of age as a criterion for limiting certain life-sustaining resources for the elderly rests on a conviction that life after some purported natural end point is not very valuable in any case.
