It sounds like the plot from some awful, dystopian future: the government institutes a lottery for the distribution of government benefits among the poor; if you are one of the lucky winners, you’ll receive health care, medicine, food, and/or education. If you lose, you’ll have to wait for some future date (assuming you live). This isn’t fiction. It’s America.

The Wichita Eagle explains that Medicare will hold a lottery for people suffering from diseases like cancer, multiple sclerosis. The 50,000 winners will receive government assistance for their medicine. The rest, numbering over 450,000, must wait until 2006:

"This initiative will get these breakthrough oral medications into the hands of seniors fighting cancer so that they have the best opportunity possible to beat the disease," said Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, whose daughter died of cancer. She wrote the provision, along with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. ... "There'll be a lottery to be chosen as one of 50,000 lucky individuals," Thompson said.

I wonder how Rep. Deborah Pryce would have felt if she had to enter a lottery to see if her daughter could be covered for necessary medication and then, having lost, died while waiting for the next stage of the program. If the government can’t afford to do something, then it can’t afford it — but creating a lottery to deal with the coverage of medicine and medical treatments is simply unconscionable.

Read More:

• Guide to Ethics and Morality
• News About Ethics
• Bioethics