Should hospitals and doctors make value judgements about who deserves treatment?

I heard on NPR’s “Here and Now” (Sept 9, 2021) that Jimmy Kimmel, the late night TV host, had expressed anger and frustration with people continuing to refuse vaccination for COVID-19. He noted that many hospitals no longer have available Intensive Care (ICU) beds available, and were going to have to triage who was admitted to them. According to the host, Robin Young, Kimmel said the decision was easy: you have a heart attack, you’re in; you have COVID and didn’t get vaccinated, you’re out. (His monologue is summarized by The Hill, among other sources.) Kimmel is not the only one to express outrage at the unvaccinated -- “shock jock” Howard Stern has responded to those who would cite their freedom to not be vaccinated with “F—k their freedom; I want my freedom to live!”— and is also not the only one called for such “ICU triage”.

Daniel Wikler, a professor of medical ethics from the Harvard School of Public Health was Ms. Young’s guest, and he said that, while he understood the anger that Kimmel and others were expressing, and empathized with it, he did not believe that it was the business of doctors or hospitals to make such decisions. It was the tradition and history of medicine, he said, to treat the illness of the patient if it was treatable, not to decide that someone had done something to themselves to make them undeserving of treatment. As an example, he noted a skier who might ignore all warnings, ski down the back of the hill, and get injured. There are lots of other potential examples, and they are valid.

I agree with Dr. Wikler on both points. First, I understand and empathize with Mr. Kimmel and others who are furious that those who have refused vaccination not only threaten the health of the rest of us but also end up utilizing a huge amount of health resources and services that not only can limit access to these services for others in need, and in any case cost huge amounts in time and effort by health professionals as well as in money. But I also agree that doctors and hospitals have no business refusing to care for these people, and that a core ethical value in medical care has been to provide care, if you are able, to help the illness of the patient, not to judge whether they are worthy of care because of their previous actions. One of the most dramatic and important examples are medical facilities in war zones, which are obligated by the Geneva Convention to treat all injured on the basis of need, not which side they fought on. To treat one’s own soldiers and not injured enemy soldiers who are prisoners is a war crime.

Many of those people who have the heart attacks that Mr. Kimmel thinks should get them into the ICU smoked cigarettes, or ate a very poor diet, or did not exercise, or all of these. While I’m sure that there are some people who are judgmental and smug enough to believe that they should suffer the results of their own life decisions and not receive care, this is not the approach that doctors and hospitals take.

There are certainly many people whose illnesses are at least partly a result of other poor decisions, including use of alcohol – both heavy lifetime use and even one episode which led to the car accident that has them in the emergency room – or other drugs. In addition, while less common than from alcohol, illness and death related to illegal drugs such as opiates and opioids and stimulants is still very common; we have all heard of the “opioid epidemic”. And there are infinite possibilities for blame when you go beyond “sins of commission” – things you did that were bad for you – and enter the realm of “sins of omission” – thing that you didn’t do that are, at least in the view of the one making the judgement, would have been good for you (e.g., diet and exercise).

Back to domestic hospital use, I would like to discuss two examples from my own experience. Suicide attempts are definitely self-inflicted, but the motivation to act is often transient, and many people who attempt suicide and survive do not attempt it again. Guns are very lethal, however, with well over 90% of suicide attempts by gun being “successful”; drugs are less so. My son killed himself with a gun, but if his attempt had been with a less lethal method, I  certainly would have wanted him treated.

On our inpatient services, residents and I have cared for many people who are repeatedly admitted with the effects of their use of alcohol or other drugs. One person I remember well. Regularly admitted for the toxic effects of alcohol overdose, on treatment and release he always pledged to get treatment for his disease, most strongly motivated by caring for his daughter, but never followed through. After many admissions, some residents thought it wasteful to continue to treat him and argued against it. My position was not only was recovery a difficult process, often with many failed attempts, but that our role was to treat his medical condition and refer him for treatment for his alcoholism. We could make the judgement that he was at fault, and each of us might have our own opinion about whether he “deserved” treatment, but that was irrelevant to our obligation to take care of it. It would be a slippery slope indeed. And I would be remiss to not point out the most common reason people are “triaged” to not receive care, at least in the US, is financial: they do not have money or good insurance. That is totally immoral and unacceptable.

There are some differences with those who refused to be vaccinated against COVID or wear masks or distance, but these are variations on a theme. Yes, they put others as well as themselves and their families at risk, but so do those who drink and drive or use other drugs, or who do many other things. It is our job to take care of them to the best of our ability. To do otherwise is to risk great hypocrisy, thinking that those who do the dangerous things we ourselves do are less culpable than those who do dangerous things we do not do and decry. I call it the “Jesse Helms fallacy” after the former powerful North Carolina senator who both opposed treatment for people with HIV/AIDS, who he said were suffering God’s punishment for their homosexuality, and also smoked like a chimney and fought for the tobacco industry. When he had developed heart disease, he sought and received treatment, despite being largely personally responsible for it.

That so many are refusing vaccination and care that there are no beds in ICUs in many states (as a person from Alabama did from heart disease after being unable to get a bed in 43 hospitals in 3 states, and as is occurring across the poorly-vaccinated South) is shameful, discouraging, and incredibly dangerous. These people are misguided, stupid, and many are even evil. But we also hear of those who (because they are dying, to be sure) regret their decisions. We can feel some sense of self-righteousness when we hear about anti-vax personalities who have died. If we are in institutions where there are not enough beds and patients have to be triaged, that triage must be on the basis of their condition and our ability to help them. The social/political fight cannot be waged at the bedside of an individual patient.

As much as we might be tempted to do so.