So Long as You Have Your Health: Health Care Distribution in Canada and Proceduralist Human Rights

42 Pages Posted: 26 Jun 2018

See all articles by Alana Klein

Alana Klein

McGill University - Faculty of Law; Faculty of Law, McGill University

Date Written: 2012

Abstract

Health resource distribution in Canada has been criticized for being opaque and increasingly inequitable, with its disproportionate emphasis on curative over preventive care. Yet there has been relatively little scrutiny of priority-setting in publicly funded health care in Canada from bodies monitoring the international human right to health. Recently, however, domestic health governance on the one hand, and international health and human rights on the other, have converged around the promotion of evidence-based policy, accountability, transparency and participation as drivers of more equitable distribution of health care resources. This paper tracks the paths toward this convergence. The emphasis in health policy was largely driven by cost containment and service integration concerns, while democratic and institutional concerns around socio-economic rights protection are at the root of the health and human rights shift toward proceduralist approaches. This shared emphasis nonetheless opens new terrains of struggle for human rights approaches to health care distribution in Canada, around (i) managing indeterminacy in social determinants of health; (ii) addressing power imbalances that shape how health information is produced, communicated, and acted upon and (iii) the role of fundamental normative values that limit substantive policy around health.

Keywords: Health, Care, Human, Rights, Policy, Governance, Accountability, Participation, Transparency, Evidence-Based

Suggested Citation

Klein, Alana and Klein, Alana, So Long as You Have Your Health: Health Care Distribution in Canada and Proceduralist Human Rights (2012). Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3189040

Alana Klein (Contact Author)

Faculty of Law, McGill University ( email )

3644 Peel Street
Montreal H3A 1W9, Quebec H3A 1W9
Canada

McGill University - Faculty of Law ( email )

3644 Peel Street
Montreal H3A 1W9, Quebec H3A 1W9
Canada

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