The Ordinary Virtue and Moral Significance of Health Systems: the Case of Taiwan

Abstract

The ordinary virtue of health systems is to secure some form of equitable access to health services for all in pursuit of the ideal of universal health coverage, which would sometimes be considered an integral part of the overall institutional arrangements protecting the human right to health. The history of human-established health systems has come close to an end. In this article, I use the Taiwanese health system as an illustrative case to demonstrate how the roles of a health system vary in different periods across multiple colonial histories. It was not until the 1990s, after Taiwan went through democratisation, that the health system began to display ordinary virtue. I further argue that, beyond the ordinary virtue, the Taiwanese health system has moral significance in (1) integrating divided and conflicting identities and forging a new, forward-looking one; and (2) representing Taiwanese people’s declaration against exclusionary global politics by devoting themselves to a space that protects the right to health and a way of life that cherishes the value of equitable access to health services for all.