Abstract
In a model where individuals differ in both their health care needs and their lifestyle preferences, we study the fair provision of health care with fresh starts. Grounded on basic ethical principles, we axiomatically derive social preferences that allow us to make welfare assessments when agents who regret their initial decisions may be granted a fresh start. Such preferences give top priority to that individual with the highest well-being difference between her actual choice and an ideal situation that entails neither regret nor health disabilities. Next, we characterise a schedule of taxes and health treatments that satisfies this social ordering. Limited by incentive-compatibility and health care needs heterogeneity, this schedule advocates balancing additional health treatments and reductions in non-medical consumption.