Setting out to defend luck egalitarianism in matters of justice in health, Shlomi Segall outlines a pluralistic
version of the luck egalitarian framework allowing egalitarian justice to be traded-off against other moral requirements.
The suggested pluralism enables luck egalitarian justice to coexist with a concern for meeting everyone’s basic needs
thereby avoiding Elizabeth Anderson’s ‘abandonment objection’. In this article, however, we present three objections to
Segall’s luck egalitarian ju…
Read moreSetting out to defend luck egalitarianism in matters of justice in health, Shlomi Segall outlines a pluralistic
version of the luck egalitarian framework allowing egalitarian justice to be traded-off against other moral requirements.
The suggested pluralism enables luck egalitarian justice to coexist with a concern for meeting everyone’s basic needs
thereby avoiding Elizabeth Anderson’s ‘abandonment objection’. In this article, however, we present three objections to
Segall’s luck egalitarian justice in health. Firstly, the account is vulnerable to the common objection that luck
egalitarianism becomes too expansive, and that Segall’s defence against this is inadequate. Secondly, Segall’s pluralist
attempt to balance luck egalitarian justice and other moral requirements ends up compromising its own ideal of justice.
Due to the fact that resource scarcity is the reality of health and health care distribution, this problem would often arise
in actual health policy. Finally, the account has a way of intensifying blameworthy behaviour which seems contrary to
luck egalitarian principles. Based on these three objections, we conclude that Segall’s luck egalitarian account of justice
in health must either be rejected or qualified further.