Factors affecting health-care allocation decisions: A case of aversive racism?

A distributive justice framework is used to examine how individuals make ju dgments about what is fair when making different types of health-care alloc ation decisions. The effects of 4 patient characteristics are assessed: (a) prognosis, (b) degree of responsibility for illness, (c) employment status , and (d) race. Results reveal that when the patient was defined as being m ore versus less responsible for his illness, respondents gave him a signifi cantly lower priority score for obtaining health-care services, and they fe lt that he should be more responsible for paying for or soliciting funds to cover the costs of his health needs. Respondents also reacted with more ne gative emotion to the responsible patient and described him in more negativ e trait terms. Although patient's race produced no main effects, race did i nteract with employment status on several key variables. When the patient w as described as being unemployed, the White patient compared to the Black p atient was given a higher health-care priority score, he was resented less, and respondents were more willing to contribute money to pay for his healt h-care costs; but when the patient was described as being employed, the dir ection of differences between the races on these variables was reversed.