Volume 66 Number 4  September 1999	back to contents

Affirmative Action and the Allocation of Health Care	241 - 246
Leslie Pickering Francis, PH.D., J.D.
Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law, Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Medical Ethics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT. Address correspondence to Leslie Pickering Francis, Ph.D., J.D., Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112.

ABSTRACT
The justifications of affirmative action, the compensatory, corrective and redistributive, have been widely recognized in legal thinking. They have been applied, principally, to employment practices. They can also be applied to health care. Arguments for affirmative action in health care allocation shift the burden of proof to those who deny that racism is the root cause of differential morbidity and mortality experienced by, for example, African Americans. At the very least, these arguments mandate much needed research into the causes of minorities' poor health. Without such research, racism remains the presumptive cause of, and affirmative action the appropriate remedy for, the health care problems minorities face.

KEY WORDS
 Affirmative action, race, allocation of health care, law and medicine, public health, medical ethics

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