ABSTRACT
'Rationing' is a term with pejorative overtones. Since the 1991 National Health Service changes it has become a key word in the unofficial lexicon of health policy. This chapter is concerned with reviewing notions about what constitutes rationing, and the background to its emergence in the 1990s as an issue high on the health-policy agenda with the shift from the language of priority-setting to that of rationing. The terms 'priority-setting' and 'rationing' are both used, often interchangeably, in deliberations about the allocation of resources. The use of age as a criterion for rationing health care is based on a simple proposition: limits on health care for elderly people are justifiable because each citizen, throughout a lifetime, would benefit if funds used to extend life at its end were redirected to earlier stages of life. Linked to the various systems of rationing is the issue of how it should occur: implicitly or explicitly.
