Abstract

A moral right to health or, more narrowly, health care, within a society (governed by a state) is a special case of a right to fair equality of opportunity. To specify the entitlements that come with such a right there should be a fair, deliberative process, such as accountability for reasonableness. Such a process informs resource allocation. A society is thus assumed to be capable of implementing such a process and raising the resources need to deliver the services involved in the entitlements of a moral right to health or health care.

To claim such a moral right globally (across national borders) requires improvements of global governance adequate to carry out the function of a fair process in specifying the entitlements of such a right and the function of raising the resources necessary to meet those entitlements. The lecture will consider whether such capabilities of global governance are feasible. The argument is that it is improbable that we can solve the coordination problem involved if we assume a world of nation-states, such as we have now. If such capabilities are unlikely to be realized, then we probably cannot achieve what is practically necessary for us to claim a global right to health or health care.