Geographical Location

The subject of the book is the relationship between State and health: it examines what we can do independently as individuals and firms and what we can undertake collectively through our politicians and bureaucrats. The subject of this part of the book is equality: it makes the tacit assumption that the distribution of health-related inputs and outcomes is somehow a matter of public as well as private concern and therefore explores both the inequalities and the policy-instruments with a view to reshaping the bent rod in the unique polity’s most favoured image. A social reformer would appear ridiculous who identified the unequal allocation of housecats and lapdogs as democratically unacceptable: most people probably believe that entitlements to housecats and lapdogs may reasonably be left to fend for themselves in the market sector of negotiation and purchase. A social reformer who turned his attention to health-related inequalities and the appropriate corrective instruments would at the very least be spared the ridicule: rightly or wrongly, and for all the reasons that were considered in chapter 2, his task would probably be regarded by his society’s consensus as somehow a worthwhile and a legitimate one.