This book fills an important niche in contemporary medical ethics literature by combining empirical descriptions of American health care with an analysis of recent philosophical writings on justice.

Part I: Realities; 1. Some American Health Care Realities: Access to Needed Care; Quality of Care; Rising Costs; Part II: Rights; 2. A Right to Health Care: The Concept of a Right; For and Against a Right to Health Care; 3. Utilitarianism: Optimal Consequences; Prudent Insurance; 4. Egalitarianism: Equal Intrinsic Value; Substantive Equality; 5. Libertarianism: Liberty and Ownership; Compensatory Rights; 6. Contractarianism: The Social Contract; Liberty, Opportunity, and Wealth; 7. Plural Foundations: Proof and Persons; Four Health Care Rights; Rights, Clarity, and Ideals; Part III: Reforms; 8. Market Reforms: Pure Competition; A Hobbled Market; 9. DRGs, HMOs, and Vouchers: Price Controls; Prepaid Group Practice; Cash and Voucher Plans; 10. National Health Care Plans: Medicare and Medicaid; National Health Insurance; A National Health Care Service

Charles J. DoughertyChairman and Professor of Philosophy, Creighton University

"Systematic, comprehensive, detailed--a real survey of the philosophical landscape, with his own rather intricate view. After describing the American health carte system and its major deficiencies, he takes the reader through four elegantly parallel chapters on the ways that utilitarian, egalitarian, libertarian, and contractarian moral theories yield different conceptions of the right to health care. Then he eclectically develops his own multi-levelled rights-based theory, borrowing elements and arguments from all four-traditions . . . . Dougherty's writing is extremely well organized conceptually. His range and scholarship are ambitious." --Bioethics