Who plays God? [medicine, money, and ethics in American health care]

"(Producer) Explores a variety of life and death situations to illustrate the spectrum of highly controversial ethical decisions made daily in modern American medicine. The program looks at the decisions that underlie the use of health-care dollars. When is life support provided and stopped? Who gets the transplants, the best technology and treatment? Who lives longer and who does not? The program features five segments that portray choices concerning prolonged life support, the painful struggle of extremely premature babies, the allocation of organ transplants, the crises that accompany the inaccessiblity of health insurance, and the often thwarted desire to die with dignity."
"A variety of life-or-death situations are presented in which controversial ethical decisions must be made, including the decision to continue or stop life support systems and the decisions on which patients receive the best and fastest medical care."
"This program discusses, in terms of costs to society and the individual, a variety of highly controversial ethical decisions made daily in health care in the United States. Host George Strait and health-care economist Uwe Rienhardt are joined by experts Joanne Lynn and Glen McGee to discuss several short films about key issues: allocation of organ transplants, prolonging of life in terminal illness, beginning of life issues as seen in premature babies, euthanasia and access to health insurance."@en