On Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:40:31 -0500, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:
snip
There are two points worth making here. First, medical ethics is a
fast-growing field of employment and it deals with the enormous problems of
"maximizing coverage." It's a tough field. Benthamist Utilitarianism is not
an answer, although you'd think it was to hear some of the more simplistic
advocates of universal care.
snip
Utilitarianism [the greatest good for the greatest number] tends
to rapidly fall into the trap that this requirement is frequently
maximized by providing a very large number of people with a very
small amount of "good." The total amount of "good" may be indeed
maximized, but the affect on any single individual is minimal.
We then have the result that large amounts of money are spent
with minimal benefit to anyone.
see
http://www.utilitarianism.com/
and
http://www.siue.edu/~evailat/i-mill.html


Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).