Morality at the Expense of Others: Equality, Solidarity, Taxes, and Debts in European Public Health Care

The entire Enlightenment project has lost its credibility, and yet Europeans still seek to justify by reason the use of government force for implement-ing social solidarity. In the face of post-modernity’s innumerable visions of “reason, ” Europeans still believe in one canonical version of reason that can authorize political commitments to human dignity and equality. They invoke such commitments in order to support their public health care, claimed to provide equal access for all to what is medically necessary. Yet, people already know that neither the justification nor the implementation works. As the articles in this issue point out, it is impossible coherently to provide health care if one tries to hide from this knowledge. Europe is passing through a period of collision with reality, with the constraints set by human finitude. In the late 1950s and through the 1960s, as Europe rebuilt after the Second World War, it experienced a period of growing affluence which, for many, appeared to be without end. Against the background of this affluence it appeared possible to put into place a thick web of social welfare supports