ABSTRACT
This chapter employs the ethical sciences to explore different ways of distributing and organising healthcare resources, and in particular evaluates the UK National Health Service (NHS) in terms of its ethics. It discusses the role of primary care practitioners, by which we mean general practitioners (GPs), practice nurses and all of the other members of primary care teams. The chapter details a variety of ethical theories that might be relevant to the distribution of healthcare. John Rawls, in his search for principles on which to build a just society, posits an 'original position' in which all parties are equal: 'all have the same rights in the procedure for choosing principles'. He envisages a 'veil of ignorance', that is, he asks us to envisage citizens choosing principles while not knowing which position they will hold in the society.
