blog.bioethics.net

The Ethics of Funding Therapy for Erectile Dysfunction

New York Times examined this week the debate about whether Medicare should cover erectile dysfunction medications; Kaiser summarizes the bioethicists' views in that piece and elsewhere:

Daniel Callahan, co-founder of the Hastings Center bioethics research institute, said that a "possible compromise solution" might be to "set specific medical criteria allowing Medicare coverage for [the] drugs when erectile dysfunction can be traced to some identifiable medical condition other than age." Robert George, a professor at Princeton University and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, said, "If impotence occurs in the normal course of a human life, as a consequence of aging, these drugs should not be covered. But if there is a real health problem, I am inclined to say the drugs should be covered." William Gee, chair of the health policy council of the American Urological Association, said, "For a 70-year-old man with hardening of the arteries caused by smoking, for a man with diabetes or multiple sclerosis or a man who has had pelvic surgery for cancer, there are clear medical indications for these drugs." Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said the issue has forced policy makers to ask, "What emphasis will we give to quality of life as a goal for pharmacological intervention?"