Maximizing welfare requires accounting for all consequential welfare advances linked to health improvements, such as opportunity to develop talents, better job prospects, and a more stable family life.

One of the most robust defenses of how the CEA approach deals with disability comes in the form of Michael Stein’s general defense of utilitarianism against forms of resource egalitarianism (Stein 2006). Stein argues that only utilitarianism, by relying on the greater benefit criterion of distributive justice, can handle our intuitions about disability when it comes to health care allocation. He acknowledges that disability is conceptually related to ill-health or functional decrement (impairmen