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Short communication 

 

 

PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY AND SHORTAGE OF RESOURCE IN HEALTHCARE  

 

Shamima Parvin Lasker 

Professor & Head  

Department of Anatomy, City Dental College,  

Dhaka, Bangladesh 

 

Health is the basic human right. It is the moral obligation of the society to ensure everyone to access 

some level of health care service for living as a human life, functioning normally and pursuing many 

other values in life. Since 1980, contemporary health care has become sophisticated and expensive in 

order to exponential advance in diagnostic capabilities and related therapeutic possibilities. Due to the 

shortage of recourse, something is needed to plays a powerful role in political dialogue that may have 

moral and ethical value. 

 

Traditionally, in medical model of disease, patients are usually not held responsibility for the genesis of 

their illness. When a person becomes ill, the medical judgment implies that he can not be blame for his 

condition. The treatment and care are appropriate and morally desirable for him.  Western philosopher 

John Rawlsian said basic social justice is resulting from a social contract between the society and 

institutions in where the parties (people) come together to achieve the benefits. The parties are 

imagined as normal and fully cooperating members of society and possessing the two moral powers – 

capacity for a sense of justice and conception of the good. Norman Daniels shifts Rawls theory in 

health care.  Health as a primary social good and people are normal and fully functioning individuals. 

Therefore, people should make significant contribution to protect the normal function by limiting 

attitude as much as possible.  Moreover, human right to healthcare implies that the individual has 

obligation for healthy behavior and the restriction of unhealthy choice as an autonomous individual. In 

addition in a liberal society, individual are normally free to do as they choose. In this respect caring for 

health is not different from other dimension of personal life.  But when the individual choices turn out 

badly and when individual remain uninfluenced by moral appeal of health education e.g. a drunk driver 

bear the costs of medical care that he needs after a car accident, a smoker have lung cancer, heart 

attack who is seriously over weight, alcohol and the liver disease, AIDS with unsaved sexual activity, 

skiing, top-class sports, and other hazardous activity etc., the legal and financial sections may be think 

of justification. 

 

If an individual has a health problem he is causally responsible due to his unhealthy life style or the risky 

behavior in the past. Since the person himself is the cause of his present problem, he is also answerable 

for the consequence of his prior behavior. Retrospective concept of responsibility is therefore retrievable.  

This attempt may guide and change the individual’s behavior for his future health and may reduce the 



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cost of healthcare. Research is needed to find out the relationship between major expenditure with certain 

pattern of behavior. 

 

References: 

Daniels, N.  Justice, Health, and Healthcare.  American Journal of Bioethics 2001; 1: 2–16. 

 

Have HAMJ ten. Genetics and culture. Bioethics in uropean perspective, Netherlands.  Kluwer 

Academic Publishers.2001. 

 

Have HAMJ ten and Loughlin M. Responsibilities and rationalities: Should the patient be blamed? 

Healthcare Analysis 1994; 2(2):119-127. 

 

Rawls, J. Political Liberalism. New York: Colombia University Press. 1996, 

 

Yvonne Denier. Mind the gap! Three approaches to scarcity in health care. Med Health Care and 

Philos  2008; 11:73–87