[The right to treatment: priority or rationing?]

The distance that exists between what medicine can offer and the resources available in order to guarantee equal rights in health care continues to expand. It is therefore necessary to begin facing some difficult choices. These choices must include both the rationing of cost and fair distribution among its receivers. In what seems a step in the right direction, a particular change has been happening that points towards the decline of the importance of "monetary fundamentalism". The Amsterdam Treaty has placed the following principles on the task list of the European Union: 1) health (not just health care) must be a much higher priority in public policy; 2) the main factors of health care inequality are social and cultural (poverty, public health considered a simple element of the economy, medicine reduced to therapeutic technology); 3) health care resources must not be just a simple financial measure; 4) the choices to be made in order to achieve equal distribution of these resources should regard all citizens and not just experts. If these principles are applied in a practical manner, an alternative to rationing health care can primarily, even if not completely, be formulated.