PRIVATIZATION AND JUST HEALTH CARE

When advocates of insurance privatization consider whether private-insurancedominated systems achieve justice at all, they tend to rely on an incomplete set of criteria for a just health-care system. They also mistakenly assume that it is enough to show that justice is in principle achievable within a private-insurance-dominated system. This essay offers a more complete set of criteria for a just health-care system. It then argues that the motivational assumptions needed to make insurance privatization at all plausible (on grounds of choice, effi ciency, and quality of care) are inconsistent with the motivational assumptions needed to show that in practice a private insurance-dominated system will achieve justice.