Ethics, access, and care.

There are two very different ways of understanding access and care that are at work in contemporary American society. One of these is the understanding that our society's health professions have about access and care as they consider their ethical commitment to respond to patients' oral health needs. The other is how these matters are understood within America's public culture. In this view, needs--including health care needs--are no different in kind or ethical significance from unmet desires of any sort. This article will spell out the differences between these two ways of understanding care and access. Comprehending the distance that separates the health professions' perspective from much of mainstream American thinking on these matters is essential to a careful discussion of the ethics of access to oral health care.