ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how economics, specifically the economies of healthcare, works through interpersonal, international and intergenerational relationships. It reviews a few major features of current healthcare and need, followed by two MELD analyses based on contrasting values and systems: one is commerce and the other is social justice. The two analyses trace how health care is understood and organised, some of the larger effects of the two systems, and their interpersonal and political effects. Basic insights into social justice identify underlying relationships of connection, concern and responsibility for others, equal rights and equal respect for all. The chapter contrasts active interventions intended to negate or absent problems and absences; negations that start from either commercial values or social justice. A global view of open totalities of health and ill health interacting with public, private and NGO services indicates looming problems.
