Full Description
The most important issue facing Canadian health care today is access to services. But who decides what services will be publicly funded, and how? The essays in Just Medicare explore the diverse means by which law influences what should and should not be covered by publicly-funded Medicare.
Edited by Colleen M. Flood, the collection demonstrates three analytical approaches to the question of what services attract public funding. The first describes the existing processes for determining what is in and out of the publicly-funded sector and what is left to the private sector. The second approach suggests the principles that should guide decision-making and then investigates existing decision-making processes to see whether or not such principles are applied. The third analytical approach focuses on the processes of determining what services are publicly funded and, in particular, the right to review or appeal those decisions.
The role of law is usually underestimated by those in health policy. Just Medicare illustrates that legal scholars can also contribute to the issue of how to allocate scarce health resources by determining what constitutes fair processes for decision-making, and by challenging unjust processes. In re-evaluating the potential of the law, this collection adds an important new dimension to the issue of health care in Canada.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
COLLEEN M. FLOOD
Part One: Constitutional and Administrative Law Challenges
to the Boundaries of Medicare
What Is In and Out of Medicare? Who Decides?
COLLEEN M. FLOOD, CAROLYN TUOHY, and MARK STABILE
Charter Challenges and Evidence-Based Decision-Making in the Health Care System: Towards a
Symbiotic Relationship
DONNA GRESCHNER
Misdiagnosis or Cure? Charter Review of the Health Care System
MARTHA JACKMAN
Claiming Equity and Justice in Health: The Role of the South African Right to Health in Ensuring Access to HIV/AIDS Treatment
LISA FORMAN
Part Two: Access to Abortion and Reproductive Health Services
Abortion Denied: Bearing the Limits of Law
SANDA RODGERS
Protecting Fairness in Women's Health: The Case of Emergency Contraception
JOANNA N. ERDMAN and REBECCA J. COOK
Achieving Reproductive Rights: Access to Emergency Oral Contraception and Abortion in Quebec
ROBERT P. KOURI
Part Three: Access for the Vulnerable: Case Studies from Aboriginal Health and Mental Health
Jurisdictional Roulette: Constitutional and Structural Barriers to Aboriginal Access to Health
CONSTANCE MACINTOSH
The Rural Aboriginal Health Gap: The Romanow Solutions?
JANESCA KYDD
Access to Treatment of Serious Mental Illness: Enabling Choice or Enabling Treatment?
SHEILA WILDEMAN
Part Four: Rationing Access: The Role of the Physician Gatekeeper
The Legal Regulation of Referral Incentives: Physician Kickbacks and Physician Self-Referral
SUJIT CHOUDHRY, NITEESH K. CHOUDHRY,
and ADALSTEINN D. BROWN
The Costs of Avoiding Physician Conflicts of Interest: A Cautionary Tale of Gainsharing Regulation
RICHARD S. SAVER
Part Five: Free Trade Agreements: Strengthening or Undermining
Access to Health Care?
The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and Its Implications for Health Care
ROXANNE MYKITIUK and MICHELLE DAGNINO
Patient Mobility in the European Union
ANDRÉ DEN EXTER
Part Six: Manufacturing Demand for Access: The Role of
the Media and the Commercialization of Research
The Power of Illusion and the Illusion of Power: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and Canadian Health Care
PATRICIA PEPPIN
The Media, Marketing, and Genetic Services
TIMOTHY CAULFIELD
Commercialized Medical Research and the Need for Regulatory Reform
TRUDO LEMMENS
Grasping the Nettle: Confronting the Issue of Competing Interests and Obligations in Health Research Policy
JOCELYN DOWNIE
Conclusion
COLLEEN M. FLOOD
Contributors
