The patient as citizen. A common-good approach to medical treatment decisions balances the emphasis on patient desires.

Individualism plays too strong a role in the arena of treatment decision making, frequently to the exclusion of any other consideration. Using a common-good or community-based ethic as a framework for treatment decision making may provide appropriate balance to the emphasis on patient desires. Self-determination is a good that must be balanced with other goods. When it is not, to quote Daniel Callahan, "Self-determination runs amok." For example, in the state of New Jersey, individuals are permitted to choose the criteria to be used in determining that their own death has occurred. Some of the principles that may lead to a reasonable understanding of the patient's rights in a "patient-as-citizen" ethical perspective are: Everyone has a legitimate claim to a basic level of healthcare. Everyone has a legitimate claim to respect for his or her refusal of recommended treatment. No one has a legitimate claim to nonbeneficial or futile treatment. No one has a legitimate claim to treatment that is being withheld as part of a just rationing system. No one has a legitimate claim to the ability to determine the medical criteria to be used for the diagnosis of his or her death. A just healthcare system is one in which individual desires for medical treatment beyond the basic level are accommodated whenever possible but not when they undermine the primary purpose of medicine to meet the basic healthcare needs of all persons.