[Is the main goal of the health care services to produce health?].

A questionnaire on the relative weight attached to severity of disease and health gain when allocating scarce resources between patient groups was answered by 99 doctors in general practice. The same questionnaire had been previously answered by politicians. Doctors and politicians alike tended to emphasize severity of disease rather than health gain when allocating scarce resources. Furthermore, many did not emphasize either of these factors, but distributed the resources equally between the different patient groups. If the patients were equally ill, the doctors attached greater weight than the politicians did to health gain. The answers to the questionnaire indicate that the obligation to help the most seriously ill and to uphold the ideal of equality are regarded as more fundamental than the goal of producing health effectively.