Withdrawing versus Withholding Treatments in Medical Reimbursement Decisions: A Study on Public Attitudes.

Background: The use of policies in medical treatment reimbursement decisions, in which only future patients are affected, prompts a moral dilemma: is there an ethical difference between withdrawing and withholding treatment?

Design: Through a preregistered behavioral experiment involving 1,067 participants, we tested variations in public attitudes concerning withdrawing and withholding treatments at both the bedside and policy levels.

Results: In line with our first hypothesis, participants were more supportive of rationing decisions presented as withholding treatments compared with withdrawing treatments. Contrary to our second prestated hypothesis, participants were more supportive of decisions to withdraw treatment made at the bedside level compared with similar decisions made at the policy level.

Public Attitudes Toward Priority Setting Principles in Health Care During COVID-19.

What role should cost-effectiveness play in health care priority setting? We assess the level of acceptance toward different priority setting principles in health care during COVID-19 and in general, thereby exploring public support for principles presented at different levels of abstraction. An online survey was distributed to a diverse sample of the Swedish population ( = 1 553). The results show that respondents were generally more supportive of priority setting principles when expressed in general abstract terms than when expressed in more case specific concrete terms.

Withdrawing or withholding treatments in health care rationing: an interview study on ethical views and implications.

Background: When rationing health care, a commonly held view among ethicists is that there is no ethical difference between withdrawing or withholding medical treatments. In reality, this view does not generally seem to be supported by practicians nor in legislation practices, by for example adding a 'grandfather clause' when rejecting a new treatment for lacking cost-effectiveness. Due to this discrepancy, our objective was to explore physicians' and patient organization representatives' experiences- and perceptions of withdrawing and withholding treatments in rationing situations of relative scarcity.

Medical Decision Style and COVID-19 Behavior.

Given the flood of health-related information stirred up by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it is important to understand the factors that influence people to engage in protective public health measures so that medical communication can be tailored to be effective. Following the idea that people have a general inclination toward health care utilization, which is either more passive (i.e.