Public attitudes about the use of chronological age as a criterion for allocating health care resources.

We present the first systematic national survey of public opinion on age-based rationing of health care resources. Older people were oversampled in order to allow more precise comparisons of attitude by age cohort as well as by other demographic variables. We found that the majority of people accept the withholding of life-prolonging medical care to hopelessly ill patients, but few would categorically withhold such care on the basis of age. The majority of all ages felt that it was the duty of individual patients regardless of age to refuse medical care that is likely to be futile.