Beneficence, justice, and health care.

This paper argues that societal duties of health promotion are underwritten (at least in large part) by a principle of beneficence. Further, this principle generates duties of justice that correlate with rights, not merely "imperfect" duties of charity or generosity. To support this argument, I draw on a useful distinction from bioethics and on a somewhat neglected approach to social obligation from political philosophy. The distinction is that between general and specific beneficence; and the approach from political philosophy has at times been called equality of concern. After clarifying the distinction and setting out the basis of the equality of concern view, I argue that the result is a justice-based principle of "specific" beneficence that should be reflected in a society's health policy. I then draw on this account to criticize, refine, and extend some prominent health care policy proposals from the bioethics literature.

Why we should not use the Affordable Care Act to encourage widespread whole genome sequencing.

Perry Payne argues that the health care system should encourage provision of whole genome sequencing (WGS) for most people in the near future. Payne's essay contains two distinct claims. One claim is that near-universal access to WGS would be beneficial both to individuals and to populations who, without it, could be on the losing end of widening health disparities. The second claim is that the preventive services provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) should be invoked to establish legal entitlements to WGS, without any patient cost sharing. We believe there are strong reasons to reject both of these claims. Indeed, the reasons that count against providing wide access to WGS are the very same reasons that undermine Payne's argument for providing WGS under the preventive services provisions of the ACA.

Real and alleged problems for Daniels's account of health justice.

Norman Daniels's theory of health justice is the most comprehensive and systematic such theory we have. In one of the few articles published so far on Daniels's new book, Just Health, Benjamin Sachs argues that Daniels's core "principle of equality of opportunity does not do the work Daniels needs it to do." Yet Sachs's objections to Daniels's framework are deeply flawed. Where these arguments do not rely on significant misreadings of Daniels, they ignore sensible strands in Just Health that considerably dull their force. After disarming Sachs's arguments against Daniels's theory, I explain why I agree with Sachs's conclusion: Daniels's equality of opportunity-based account of health justice rests on shaky foundations.