Gustav Schmoller and Adolph Wagner: The Idea of Social Justice in Health Care

Social justice is a major concern of both, Gustav Schmoller and Adolph Wagner. The goal of this paper is to show, how the thought of social justice relates to health care and its institutions at the time of early industrialization. The first part of this paper is devoted to the concept of social justice by Gustav Schmoller (1838–1917) who designed and suggested market-based social institutions to address three basic risks of life: health insurance, cooperative accident insurance (Berufsgenossenschaft), and provisions in the case of the loss of the breadwinner. Loss of the work place is not yet compensated for. The second part is devoted to the concept of social justice by Adolph Wagner (1835–1917), the public finance theorist, who not only foresaw the growing influence of the State in developed societies over time, but also formulated the conditions under which the State should play a role in the provision and finance of, for instance, health care. Despite basic differences in approach, both authors share a concern for social justice, which is still prominent in the modern institutions such as the health economic evaluations (introduced in Germany in 2011) and the health fund (introduced in 2009). The paper ends with a summary and conclusions.