How should health-related resources be allocated at the population-level? This project explores some problems with conventional approaches to this problem and presents a new approach to this question. The new approach uses the strengths of both substantive principles that are used to directly evaluate alternative allocations and of procedural approaches that are used to indirectly evaluate alternative allocations by looking at how the decisions have been formed. The proposed combination of these approaches avoids difficulties that current approaches face. The new approach takes difficulties comparing different, relevant values (e.g. health maximization, health equality) seriously, provides a role for preferences of the affected population, and explains why some allocations are determinately unacceptable regardless of how the decisions have been formed. The project is located in the analytical-philosophical tradition but uses also health economics and complements this with political theory that addresses the nature of political deliberation. The project is purely theoretical, but besides its obvious relevance for population-level bioethics, it is important for population ethics, political theory, health economics and in particular health policy.
