Health and social justice.

Theories of social justice applied to health care have typically focused on justifying health care (medicine and public health) as a special social good. Rationalizing greater equality in health care is typically the point of departure for most approaches to medical ethics, even those that include health assessment. In general, these approaches have paid relatively little attention to universal concerns of social justice with respect to health itself. This article focuses on the question of why health, as opposed to health care, has special moral importance for social justice.