 For our purposes, however, the lesson to be drawn from the literature on the social determinants of population health is that we cannot expect health inequalities to disappear solely as a result of providing universal access to care. Health care is not the only socially controllable factor affecting population health and its distribution. This leaves us with a question we shall have to address: if other factors besides health care are important determinants of health, then is the focus on providing universal access to health care misplaced? Even if justice requires us to promote or protect health, does it require us to do so through the provision of access to health care, or should we now modify our view of the importance of health care in light of what we have learned from social epidemiology? We return to address this issue in Sections 3 and 4.