Work

Information Discrimination and Its Implications on Distributing Healthcare Costs Fairly

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: When healthcare resources are scarce, they ought to be distributed fairly across society. For some theories of distribution, an assessment of individual health risk is required for a fair distribution of both healthcare resources and burdens. Despite this requirement, prevailing theories underappreciate the cost of information on health risk. Information relevant to health risk will be ignored when these costs are too high, leading to a form of discrimination that I term "information discrimination". This leads to a potential source of unfairness for any health system that aims to distribute the burdens of healthcare across individuals according to their expected health states. Individuals whose risks are cheap to identify will have their risks personalized whereas individuals whose risks are expensive to identify will have their risks spread across society or the collective. This paper discusses the implications of this unfairness on two types of distributive theories in healthcare: responsibility-sensitive and responsibility-insensitive.

Source: Bioethics

DOI: 10.1111/bioe.70112

Author: Harisan U. Nasir

Institution: National University of Singapore

Language: English

Topic: Ethics and bioethics in healthcare

Subfield: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,550