[Allocation of economic resources in medicine. The example of "peak medicine"].

The application of economic rules of allocation to tragic situations, which are often given in the health care system, is confronted with the problem, that economic decision rules normally follow an act-consequential ethic while medical decision rules have a strong affinity to a result-consequential ethic. The limited willing-ness-to-pay for health care leads to the necessity to use economic rules of resource allocation both on a global and on a personal level. But differences in the structure of the decision call for different rules of resource allocation. On a global level the allocation rule should be dominated by economic efficiency, while on a personal level the allocation rule should be guided by ideas of equity and fairness.