Public health theorists and practitioners typically model health as a public good, defined as a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Moreover, the public goods nature of public health seems to do a fair bit of the normative work in justifying many of the sweeping and controversial population-based interventions that accompany public health campaigns. In this paper we critically examine both claims. In the first instance, we point out that modeling health as a public good raises a number of concerns that the public health literature seems to miss. In addition, we take issue with the justificatory role that modeling health as a public good is supposed to play. One concern affecting the public goods argument is how to interpret the role of free-riding in a public health context.
