Medicine and social justice : essays on the distribution of health care / edited by Rosamond Rhodes, Margaret P. Battin, Anita Silvers.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Ch. 1. Justice, health, and health care -- Ch. 2. Justice and the basic structure of health-care systems -- Ch. 3. Multiculturalism and just health care: taking pluralism seriously -- Ch. 4. Utilitarian approaches to justice in health care -- Ch. 5. Aggregation and the moral relevance of context in health-care decision making -- Ch. 6. Why there is no right to health care -- Ch. 7. Specifying the content of the human right to health care -- Ch. 8. Unequal by design: health care, distributive justice, and the American political process -- Ch. 9. Health-care justice and agency -- Ch. 10. Treatment according to need: justice and the British National Health Service -- Ch. 11. Rationing decisions: integrating cost-effectiveness with other values -- Ch. 12. Resources and rights: court decisions in the United Kingdom -- Ch. 13. Justice and the social reality of health: the case of Australia -- Ch. 14. Justice for all? The Scandinavian approach -- Ch. 15. Ethics, politics, and priorities in the Italian health-care system -- Ch. 16. Philosophical reflections on clinical trials in developing countries -- Ch. 17. Racial groups, distrust, and the distribution of health care -- Ch. 18. Gender justice in the health-care system: past experiences, present realities, and future hopes -- Ch. 19. Bedside justice and disability: personalizing judgment, preserving impartiality -- Ch. 20. The medical, the mental, and the dental: vicissitudes of stigma and compassion -- Ch. 21. Children's right to health care: a modest proposal -- Ch. 22. Age rationing under conditions of injustice.

Ch. 23. Just expectations: family caregivers, practical identities, and social justice in the provision of health care -- Ch. 24. Caring for the vulnerable by caring for the caregiver: the case of mental retardation -- Ch. 25. Justice, health, and the price of poverty -- Ch. 26. Alternative health care: limits of science and boundaries of access -- Ch. 27. Justice in transplant organ allocation -- Ch. 28. Priority to the worse off in health-care resource prioritization -- Ch. 29. Whether to discontinue nonfutile use of a scarce resource -- Ch. 30. Disability, justice, and health-systems performance assessment -- Ch. 31. Responsibility for health status -- Ch. 32. Does distributive justice require universal access to assisted reproduction? -- Ch. 33. Premature and compromised neonates -- Ch. 34. Just caring: Do future possible children have a just claim to a sufficiently healthy genome?

Print version record.

Because medicine can preserve and restore health and function, it has been widely acknowledged as a basic good that a just society should provide its members. Yet there is wide disagreement over the scope of what is to be provided, to whom, how, when and why. In this uniquely comprehensive book some of the best-known philosophers, doctors, lawyers, political scientists, and economists writing on the subject discuss the concerns and deepen our understanding of the theoretical and practical issues that run through the contemporary debate. The first section lays a broad theoretical basis for understanding the subject of justice, particularly as it relates to the distribution of health care. The second section critically examines how medical care is distributed in different countries around the world and the particular advantages and injustices associated with those systems. The third section draws attention to the special needs of different social groups and the specific issues of justice that are raised by the impact of various policies on health care distribution.; The concluding section delves into the dilemmas that confront those designing health care systems - the politics, the priorities, and the place of desires as opposed to needs in a socially just scheme.

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