As individuals grow older, they usually require assistance with the daily tasks of self-care. This type of assistance, ancillary care, is essential to maintaining the health of those who need these services. In his prudential lifespan account, Norman Daniels includes access to such services making his account an attractive proposal given the current demographic shift. In this paper, I examine the prudential lifespan account through the lens of old age and I focus on the two concepts on which the lifespan account relies. I show that these two concepts, normal species functioning and opportunity cannot buttress Daniels’s lifespan account; at least it cannot do so for older persons. The tensions that I identify in the prudential lifespan account in relation to aging are instructive for the more recent proposals to include aging in a theory of health and health justice. In addition, my analysis allows me to demonstrate that Daniels’s view of opportunity is irreconcilable to capabilities, the latter being more adaptable to the realities of aging. If capabilities appear more promising, it is nonetheless imperative that the specificities of extended care, such as the need for unpaid caregiving, be taken into consideration.

随着个人年龄的增长，他们通常需要帮助来完成日常的自我保健任务。这种类型的援助，即辅助护理，对于维持需要这些服务的人的健康至关重要。在其审慎的生命周期账户中，诺曼丹尼尔斯包括对此类服务的访问，鉴于当前的人口结构变化，他的账户成为一个有吸引力的提议。在本文中，我通过老年的镜头来研究审慎的寿命账户，并重点关注寿命账户所依赖的两个概念。我表明，正常物种功能和机会这两个概念不能支持 Daniels 的寿命解释；至少不能对老年人这样做。我在审慎寿命帐户中确定的与衰老相关的紧张局势对于最近提出的将衰老纳入健康和健康正义理论的建议具有指导意义。此外，我的分析使我能够证明丹尼尔斯的机会观与能力不协调，后者更能适应老龄化的现实。如果能力看起来更有希望，那么必须考虑扩展护理的特殊性，例如需要无偿护理。