to Health Care Distribution in the United States

The principles of justice developed by John Rawls and articulated in his work A'Theory of Justice, published in 1971, were used as the evaluative tool in assessing health care distribution in the United States. A model for using Rawls ' theory was developed emphasizing the role of the 'least advantaged ' as the focal point for evaluating the fairness of the health care distribution system. In the United States the classes of least advantaged were found to be unfairly treated using Rawls ' second princple of justice. The implication for social policy of applying Rawls ' principles of justice to the health care delivery system in the United States is that a different means of distribution needs to be instituted, as the present distributive model is unable to guarantee just minimums of care for those in society who are least advantaged. To clarify this conclusion, the United States model of health care delivery was compared to the socialist model of Sweden and the mixed model of Canada. Application of Rawls ' principles to the health care distribution system demonstrates that these principles can be used in a concrete manner to measure the justice of social policies