... to find a compromise, a solution by assuming that, through efficiency, health/nursing costs can be lowered, making Callahan’s age-based rationing unnecessary. Originality/value This paper is original as it, by including nursing costs as an inseparable component of health-care costs, makes...

..., writers such as Daniel Callahan have proposed age‐based rationing of health care while utilizing the utilitarian notions of ethics and justice. However, other writers, utilizing more egalitarian notions of justice, have opposed this. This suggests an ethical dilemma, which has to be debated in the future...