Principles of justice as a basis for conceptualizing a health care system.

This paper opens with a concern for the causes of the maldistribution of health care throughout most of the world. It then explores briefly the question of entitlement to health care, focusing on the appropriateness of expressing that entitlement in terms of social justice. Some principles of justice as related to health care are formulated, drawing on the thinking of John Rawls and his Theory of Justice, and the ideas of distributive justice that have been set forth by Nicholas Rescher. These principles are then used as a basis for planning a theoretical health care system in the setting of a less-developed country. This theoretical health care system is intended to reflect a just distribution of health care under conditions of varying limitations of resources, including those in which resources are not adequate to provide care for all of the people. Some of the technical, social, and political implications of such a system are discussed.