The Ethics of Health Incentive Programs

Some recently proposed health policies and programs aim to encourage individual responsibility with respect to lifestyle choices. One way of advancing this goal is to provide individuals with incentives to live healthy lives. For example, individuals may be offered discounted health insurance rates if they adopt healthy lifestyles, or they may be given vouchers to purchase healthy food or use fitness centres. Such programs are forms of the so called “nudging” approaches, meant to motivate people without coercively interfering with their private choices and to improve health outcomes without regulating the market for products that are detrimental to health.This conference addresses a range of questions that bear on the normative status of health incentive programs and policies: How should we balance autonomy, solidarity and justice in health incentive policies? How should we define and address vulnerability, stigmatization and personal responsibility in health incentive programs? Which responsibility do health incentive research projects carry for possible future value changes in health care systems? How can different theories of justice help us think about health incentive programs? Which questions arise from a global ethics perspective on health incentive programs?