What is Enough?

"Health care allocation and sufficientarianism, the distributive view according to which what matters is to lift individuals above a certain threshold of needs, are two of the more hotly contested topics in moral and political philosophy. Somehow, however, they have rarely been linked. This book is the first of its kind to weave these two important questions together. It is therefore a very welcome addition to the literature on health care ethics. Not only is it likely to generate a lot of interest among political philosophers and bioethicists, but it will also, in all likelihood, become a key reference point for any future debates about sufficiency in health."-Shlomi Segall, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem "The idea that justice requires us to provide citizens with sufficient health care is plausible and attractive to many, across the political spectrum. Making the principle more precise, however, especially when it comes to specifying what counts as sufficient, is difficult. This book contains many excellent papers across a wide range, and is a major step forward in our understanding of the ethics of allocating scarce health care resources."-Roger Crisp, Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford "How should a country decide how much it should spend on health? Considerations of need, efficiency and justice will be paramount. Yet it is also vital to keep in mind how else those same resources could be spent. These questions often take second-place to political grandstanding, in which medical care becomes an ideologically-charged electoral issue. This excellent collection should help redress the balance, containing bold and highly original contributions from leading health economists, political philosophers, policy makers and bioethicists. The volume concentrates especially on the idea of health sufficiency and its role in health policy. What is 'sufficient health' and does justice require that governments supply it? These papers will bring much needed clarity to the general debate about health justice and show the importance of approaching the topic with health sufficiency at the forefront of discussion."-Jonathan Wolff, Blavatnik Chair in Public Policy, University of Oxford