People in many societies consider it outrageous if the social and economic inequalities they generally accept interfere with people's ability to get what they need to prevent or cure illness. They convert belief into action by designing and financing health-care institutions that deliver public health and medical services more equitably than many other goods. What is so special about meeting health-care needs? Can we justify these beliefs and practices?

Not surprisingly, the answers to these questions depend on explaining the special moral importance of health itself, at least from the point of view of justice. Once we can explain why health is of special moral importance, we can explain why special importance is given to meeting health-care needs equitably. That was the strategy of my central argument over two decades ago in Just Health Care: (1) Since health care promotes health (or normal functioning), and since health contributes to protecting opportunity, then health care protects opportunity. (2) If justice requires society to protect opportunity, then justice gives special importance to health care.

Instead of showing directly that justice requires protecting opportunity, however, I borrowed support for that claim from Rawls's theory of justice as fairness and its robust principle assuring fair equality of opportunity. In effect, I could then replace (2) with (3) Since Rawls's justice as fairness requires protecting opportunity, then at least one prominent theory of justice gives special importance to health care.