In practice and in the philosophical literature on health priorities, the standard view is to ignore the third party and non-medical effects when allocating scarce healthcare resources. In this paper, we argue against this exclusionary view and propose an inclusive view instead. We argue that, in principle, every foreseeable effect of a decision should matter when prioritising healthcare resources and that indirect and direct effects and medical and non-medical effects should count equally. We thus propose widening the scope of attention from patients qua patients to everyone affected by the allocation of healthcare resources.

The inclusive view is compatible with several principles for healthcare priority setting. However, for clarity of exposition, we make our case on the background of a prioritarian view, which states that healthcare resources should be allocated with a special emphasis on the worst off. We defend the inclusive view against objections that it is ageist, ableist and unfair.