Abstract
The difficulty for physicians to integrate the ethical criterion of distributive justice in their decision making is partly due to the emotions sparked off by patients’ countenance. The concern for a rational distribution of sanitary resources according to the needs of the community doesn’t match with the emotional intensity of compassion. The gradual integration of fixing a price scale for a given medical activity in hospitals offers the advantage of balancing the influence of spontaneous emotions in the medical decision. Yet, the drawback lies in the favouring of profitability rather than distributive justice.