Main description:

Health and Social Justice provides a theoretical framework for health ethics, public policy and law in which Dr Ruger introduces the health capability paradigm, an innovative and unique approach which considers the capability of health as a moral imperative. This book is the culmination of more than a decade and a half of work to develop the health capability paradigm, with a vision of a world where all have the capability to be healthy. This vision is grounded in
the Aristotelian view of human flourishing and also Amartya Sen's capability approach. In this new paradigm, not just health care, or even just health alone, but the capability for health itself is a moral imperative, as is ensuring the conditions that allow all individuals the means to achieve central
health capabilities.
Key tenets of health capability include health agency, shared health governance, where individuals, providers and institutions work together to create a social system enabling all to be healthy, and the use of theorized agreements and shared reasoning to guide social choice and shape health policy and decision-making. This book provides philosophical justification for the direct moral importance of health and the capability for health and follows a norms-based approach to health promotion. It
employs a joint scientific and deliberative approach to guide health system development and reform, and the allocation of scarce health resources. The health capability paradigm integrates both proceduralist and consequentialist approaches to justice, and both moral and political legitimacy are
critical.

Contents:

INTRODUCTION ; THE CURRENT SET OF ETHICAL FRAMEWORKS ; 1. Approaches to Medical and Public Ethics ; AN ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNT- THE HEALTH CAPABILITY PARADIGM ; 2. Health and Human Flourishing ; 3. Pluralism, Incompletely Theorized Agreements, and Public Policy ; 4. Justice, Capability, and Health Policy ; 5. Grounding the Right to Health ; DOMESTIC HEALTH POLICY APPLICATIONS ; 6. A Health Capability Account of Equal Access ; 7. A Health Capability Account of Equitable and Efficient Health Financing and Insurance ; 8. Allocating Resources: A Joint Scientific and Deliberative Approach ; DOMESTIC HEALTH REFORM ; 9. Political and Moral Legitimacy: A Normative Theory of Health Policy Decision-making ; CONCLUSION