Rawls and Healthcare Justice

Abstract This chapter reviews the influence of Rawls’s political philosophy on debates surrounding justice in healthcare, understood broadly to include medical care, public health, and policies addressing the social determinants of health. It begins by tracing Rawls’s own treatment of the subject, which, despite recognizing healthcare as an important matter of social justice, remains theoretically underdeveloped. The chapter then provides an overview of various attempts to reconstruct a general theory of healthcare justice by building on the foundations of Rawls’s political philosophy. Finally, it explores the implications of Rawlsian political philosophy for a series of practical issues in healthcare justice. These include health inequalities and the social determinants of health, personal responsibility for health outcomes, neutrality and public reason in health policy, and global justice and the human right to health.