Just Health Care

Title: Just Health Care
ABP identifier: ABP-W-0022
Creator: Norman Daniels
Date: 1985
Type: Book
Description: Daniels recast access to health care as a problem of justice rather than charity or consumer preference. Drawing on Rawlsian political philosophy, he argued that disease and disability restrict people’s normal range of opportunities and that protecting fair opportunity provides a basis for assigning special importance to health needs.
Intellectual stream: Justice & allocation; Principles & methods
Verification status: Verified
Evidence confidence: High
Historical significance: Daniels recast access to health care as a problem of justice rather than charity or consumer preference. Drawing on Rawlsian political philosophy, he argued that disease and disability restrict people’s normal range of opportunities and that protecting fair opportunity provides a basis for assigning special importance to health needs. He then tested that account against questions about access, occupational risk, care of older people, and obligations to providers. Just Health Care gave allocation ethics a sustained theoretical foundation at a time when American bioethics was often identified with individual clinical decisions. It helped move questions of institutions, distribution, and health policy toward the center of the field.