We have focused in previous chapters on general questions from social choice theory. We did not discuss the large bulk of applied questionnaire studies, e.g. about attitudes towards taxation or towards social insurance, that are mainly policy-oriented and that are not framed within a social choice context. Of course each individual questionnaire study that we have discussed describes a case taken from one specific policy setting, but the aim was to derive conclusions that went beyond that specific setting. In this chapter we follow a different approach in bringing together questionnaire studies from one policy domain: that of health care and health insurance. Focusing on one domain may be interesting if one accepts that theories of justice should take into account specific features of the economic environment. Indeed, one of the main findings from the questionnaire studies discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 was that lay opinions about justice do depend on the specific context.

Why focus on health? There can be no doubt that the domain of health policy raises some of the most challenging ethical questions that our societies are facing today. More important for our purposes, the health economic literature contains many questionnaire studies that are closely related to the social choice issues that have been discussed in previous chapters. At the same time, however, the health domain, with its decisions about life and death, involves specific ethical considerations that deserve a special treatment.