Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly

by Norman Daniels

In this new book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: What is the special moral importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? The theory has implications for national and global health policy: Can we meet health needs fairly in aging societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict?

Genres: Health Care, Philosophy, Medicine, Economics

410 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

Reviews

[J. Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

As one of the major books in my field, I had high hopes for Just Health. In this book, Daniels develops a comprehensive theory -- accountability for reasonableness -- in order to address three key questions: (1) Is there a special moral importance of health?, (2) When are health inequities unjust?, and (3) How can we meet health needs fairly if we can't meet them all? The book's first section spends time responding to each of these questions from a theoretical perspective, before combining them into the A4R framework I've used countless times in my organizational ethics consults. The second section poses some challenges to A4R, and the final section applies the framework to several use cases.

Unfortunately, I found this very difficult to motivate myself to finish. This is the main reason it doesn't score a higher rating, despite the excellent information. There were several sections that felt like they could have been condensed or removed, especially when it came to the multiple "as I discussed in chapter X" references. If these were quick reminder references that would have been fine, but often they were re-argumentations.

Another, smaller, issue I have with the book is that the majority of the citations used to build the theory are from the 70s and 80s, despite the book being published in the late 00s. It appeared as I read that the majority of the references from closer to the publication date were simply application cases of the older sources. Bioethics as a field went through rapid changes in the second half of the 20th century, including dividing itself into theoretical and empirical/clinical subspecialties. By relying on the older sources, the arguments miss this nuance which could have produced stronger responses to objections.

[Johnny Franzén · Rating 4 out of 5]

410 sidor etiskt resonemang (fram och tillbaka) om hur vi möter hälsobehoven rättvist när vi inte kan tillgodose alla. Mums.