We thank the open peer commentators for their thoughtful responses to our article, "The Social Determinants of Health: Why Should We Care?" (Preda and Voigt 2015). Since space constraints prevent us from responding in detail to all the comments raised, we focus on two areas of concern that emerged from the commentaries. The first is our claim that avoidability is neither necessary nor sufficient for defining unjust or unfair health inequalities. The second area relates to the reasons we might give (...) for treating health inequalities as morally problematic. (shrink)