RESUMO
Communalization of health care refers to the increasing responsibility of citizens to look after their ill or handicapped fellow members of society and to provide care to them. Governments in Western Europe more and more develop health care policies directed at communalization of health care. The article discusses the care responsibilities of individuals based on the views of the philosophers Buber, Levinas, and Ricoeur and on the views of the family therapist Nagy. The care responsibilities of states are discussed in terms of the views of the political philosophers Rawls and Daniels and these are linked to right liberal, left liberal, and Christian-democrat views on care responsibilities of states. Thereupon, four criteria for a proper communalization of health care are proposed and different forms of health care policies with respect to communalization of care are assessed. In the last section, we look closely at several measures in the just reformed Dutch health care system and discuss how far these measures meet our criteria for a proper communalization. We focus in this section on the effects of these measures on family care because more and more family care plays an important role in good functioning of the health care system.
