How does the operation of PHARMAC's 'Community Exceptional ...

among the members of the society, and arrive at one set of principles of justice
which are fair for the whole group.
Rawls called this the priority problem of assigning weights to the competing
principles of justice (Rawls, 1971). He appealed to the use of intuition by
decision–makers to decide on these competing interests. Rawls argued that
there is nothing irrational about using intuition because ultimately the
conception of justice will have to rely on judgments. Rawls asserted that if the
principles of justice were to be arranged in a lexicographical order, the order
would need to satisfy the principle of the original position. This would require an
ordering of inequalities to constrain the original principles of justice. So ordering
or weighting principles does not get us very far. This is why Rawls suggests
that intuition reflects the need to reach agreement on how the principles of
justice are to be balanced on the basis of fairness and equity. Self-examination
thus opens the way for the two Rawlsian principles previously mentioned.
Reflection moves us closer to perceptions of fairness as a philosophical ideal
even though we may never perfectly achieve it.
Interestingly, Rawls omitted health or health care from his lexicon of primary
goods which all would agree desirable in the greatest possible account,
consistent with the account of all others. Many scholars of Rawls, including
Hadorn (1988) have attempted to explain this apparent omission.
Hadorn (1988), in his thesis on Rawlsian distributive justice, discussed the
development of an affordable and fair health system in the USA. He argued
that the more correct place for health (or health care) within Rawls’ theory was
on a par with other rights and liberties. Since without adequate health, none of
the other rights and liberties can be exercised or enjoyed. Gutmann (1992)
argued that ill health interferes with our happiness by undermining not only our
freedoms but also our self-confidence and self-respect, which Rawls values
centrally under the ‘veil’.
An element of Rawls’ theory which has drawn criticism is the fact that the
language in the theory is positioned in generic male terms. Rawls (1972) refers
to ‘he’, ‘his’, ‘fathers’, ‘sons’ and the ‘principle of fraternity’ (p. 251 and p. 256).
The veil of ignorance makes no mention of the deep gender structures of
society and the impact that gender difference has on the notions of the original
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