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Public Value, Maximization and Health Policy: An Examination of Hausman’s Restricted Consequentialism

Public Value, Maximization and Health Policy: An Examination of Hausman’s Restricted... AbstractIn the book Valuing Health, Daniel Hausman sets out a normative framework for assessing social policy, which he calls restricted consequentialism. For the restricted consequentialist, government policy-making not only is, but ought to be, largely siloed in individual government departments. Each department has its own goal linked to a fundamental public value, which it should pursue in a maximizing way (subject to constraint by other non-consequentialist values). I argue that, first, Hausman’s argument appears to be internally inconsistent: his case for thinking that health policy should default to a form of maximization is plausible only if a much narrower vision of the goals of policy is adopted than Hausman thinks appropriate in the case of education. Secondly, it turns out that none of Hausman’s analysis helps us with the crucial question of how maximization should be constrained by other values—a question that even on Hausman’s account looks to be crucial, and that will be even more important if adopt a broader perspective on the purposes of health policy than Hausman allows. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Public Health Ethics Oxford University Press

Public Value, Maximization and Health Policy: An Examination of Hausman’s Restricted Consequentialism

Wilson, James
Public Health Ethics , Volume 10 (2) – Jul 1, 2017
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References (9)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. Available online at www.phe.oxfordjournals.org
ISSN
1754-9973
eISSN
1754-9981
DOI
10.1093/phe/phw020
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractIn the book Valuing Health, Daniel Hausman sets out a normative framework for assessing social policy, which he calls restricted consequentialism. For the restricted consequentialist, government policy-making not only is, but ought to be, largely siloed in individual government departments. Each department has its own goal linked to a fundamental public value, which it should pursue in a maximizing way (subject to constraint by other non-consequentialist values). I argue that, first, Hausman’s argument appears to be internally inconsistent: his case for thinking that health policy should default to a form of maximization is plausible only if a much narrower vision of the goals of policy is adopted than Hausman thinks appropriate in the case of education. Secondly, it turns out that none of Hausman’s analysis helps us with the crucial question of how maximization should be constrained by other values—a question that even on Hausman’s account looks to be crucial, and that will be even more important if adopt a broader perspective on the purposes of health policy than Hausman allows.

Journal

Public Health Ethics – Oxford University Press

Published: Jul 1, 2017

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