Ai ricci importa la salute pubblica? La teoria dei diritti di Dworkin, i beni pubblici e le sfide della pandemia

Abstract

In this paper, after offering a short vindication of public health as public good that liberal government should guarantee, I will show why Ronald Dworkin’s theory of justice in health care does not offer guidance in two cases that arise in pandemics: 1) how to set priorities in rationing access to intense care unit, 2) how to choose between vaccination policies. This lack of guidance is due to an unrealistic assumption that follows from Dworkin’s idea of the unity of value: that it is always possible to strike a balance between individual rights and collective claims in maintaining a public good (in this case public health).