Is the Equity of Access to Healthcare a European Constitutional Standard? A Comparative Review

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-462
Author(s):  
Dawid Sześciło
Keyword(s):  
Health Services ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Access To Healthcare ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Healthcare It ◽  
Comparative Review ◽  
Accessibility Of Health Services ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equity Of Access

Abstract A welfare state crisis resulting from austerity policies creates risks to healthcare systems throughout Europe. It escalates the pressure to reduce State responsibilities and weakens the guarantees of accessibility and quality of health services. One of the most effective barriers to this tendency might be a strong constitutional standard of the right to health. This article reviews the constitutional acts of 28 European Union Member States in order to explore the scope of protection of the right to health, with a special focus on the various aspects of equity of access to healthcare. It also shows the absence of a universal European standard of the constitutional regulation of this matter, and describe major differences relating to formulation, level of protection guaranteed, and the material scope of regulation. In conclusion, a hypothesis is proposed on the potential role of constitutional guarantees in preventing the deterioration of accessibility of health services.

Health Services

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Reinert
Keyword(s):  
Health Services ◽  
Child Survival ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Essential Medicines ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
The Right

This chapter considers health services as a basic good that satisfy critical basic human needs for maintaining minimal levels of well-being. It considers the widespread nature of health services deprivation and the consequent negative health impacts. The chapter examines the subsistence right to health services and the role of this right within the United Nations system of human rights. It doing so, it makes a distinction between the right to health services and the right to health itself, favoring the former. It also examines the leading causes of death, child survival, the provision of health services to poor people, essential medicines, medical brain drain, antimicrobial resistance, and pandemics.

The Debatable Role of Courts in Brazil's Health Care System: Does Litigation Harm or Help?

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Mota Prado
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Equal Access ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Clean Water ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
State Obligations ◽  
The Right

The 1988 Brazilian Constitution establishes a right to health in two of its provisions. The first provision provides a relatively long list of social rights, which includes not only the right to health, but also the right to the determinants of health such as education, food, employment, and shelter (Art. 6). The second provision (Art. 196) recognizes the two components of the right to health, namely: (i) factors that are likely to affect a person’s health, such as access to clean water, sanitation and nutrition; and (ii) medical care or health services. This second provision establishes that the right to health “shall be guaranteed by means of social and economic policies aimed at reducing the risk of illness and other hazards and by the universal and equal access to actions and services for its promotion, protection and recovery.” It also enumerates state obligations, the first and most important one being the duty of the Brazilian state to guarantee the right to health to every citizen.

The Origins of Human Rights in Global Health

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence O. Gostin ◽  
Benjamin Mason Meier
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Global Health ◽  
International Law ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
Global Standards ◽  
The Right

This chapter introduces the foundational importance of human rights for global health, providing a theoretical basis for the edited volume by laying out the role of human rights under international law as a normative basis for public health. By addressing public health harms as human rights violations, international law has offered global standards by which to frame government responsibilities and evaluate health practices, providing legal accountability in global health policy. The authors trace the historical foundations for understanding the development of human rights and the role of human rights in protecting and promoting health since the end of World War II and the birth of the United Nations. Examining the development of human rights under international law, the authors introduce the right to health as an encompassing right to health care and underlying determinants of health, exploring this right alongside other “health-related human rights.”

scholarly journals The Role of Pharmaceutical Security in Realization of the Right to Health

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (39) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aslan Khuseinovich Abashidze ◽  
Vladislav Sergeevich Malichenko ◽  
Svetlana Borisovna Malichenko
Keyword(s):  
Right To Health ◽  
The Right

The Human Right to Health and the Virtue of Creative Resolve

2020 ◽  
pp. 36-58
Author(s):  
Nicole Hassoun
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
The Right

Some maintain that people lack a human right to health because this right cannot provide guidance for distributing scarce resources. Even if the skeptics are right on this point, the second chapter suggests that is not a reason to reject the right; the role of the human right to health is to provide a kind of hope that can foster the virtue of creative resolve. This resolve is a fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be tragic dilemmas. Rather than helping one decide how to ration scarce resources, the human right to health provides reason to find ways to fulfill everyone’s claims. The hope this right provides gives us a response to apparent tragedy in motivating us to search for ways of avoiding it—rather than an account of distributive justice.

The Right to Health

2018 ◽  
pp. 231-264
Author(s):  
Sandra Fredman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Personal Integrity ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

Is health a human right? Many would maintain that it is not. On this view health and ill-health are due to natural causes, not to State actions. Others are concerned that health raises too many polycentric problems to be dealt with through justiciable human rights. These contestations have shaped the way in which the right to health is understood. Section II sketches out the health context. Section III considers jurisdictions in which there is no express right to health, but a right has been derived from rights to life, personal integrity, or privacy. Section IV contrasts this approach with jurisdictions with an express right to health. Section V examines the role of the right to equality, while section VI focuses on reproductive health. The final section returns to the challenges of polycentricity and the extent to which a justiciable right can address systemic issues rather than individual rights to medication.

s.Two Implementation and Accountability, 8 Justiciability of Human Rights for Health

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flood Colleen M ◽  
Thomas Bryan
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Health And Human Rights ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Health Related ◽  
State Obligations ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines both the power and limitations of litigation as a means of facilitating accountability for the advancement of public health. While almost half of the world’s constitutions now contain a justiciable right to health, the impact of litigation has been mixed. Judicial accountability has, in some cases, advanced state obligations to realize the highest attainable standard of health, but in other cases, litigation has threatened the solidarity undergirding public health systems. There is significant country-to-country variation in interpreting health-related human rights, as well as differing views of the proper role of courts in interpreting and enforcing these rights. Surveying regional human rights systems and national judicial efforts to address health and human rights, it is necessary to analyze how courts have approached—and how they should approach—litigation of the right to health and health-related human rights to improve health for all.

Health diplomacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-176
Author(s):  
Annamarie Bindenagel Šehovic´
Keyword(s):  
Right To Health ◽  
Health It ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Health Diplomacy ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
The Right ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Insight Into

This article explores the role of health diplomacy in promoting the right to health. It first looks at the historical trajectory of the right to health as it evolves and intersects with state and human and health security. Second, it analyzes the definitions and roles of health diplomacy. It argues that health diplomacy is undergoing a cycle of (re)invention and innovation, bringing in both new and traditional actors. Yet it points out a gap in the subject of health diplomacy, asking what is the right to health, and what does its definition mean for the (changing) role of health diplomacy? It concludes by offering initial insight into what health diplomacy might be in the nearer future.

scholarly journals The right to medical care and its economic consequences: an American dilemma

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-327
Author(s):  
José Duarte de Araújo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Right

The concepts of "rights" and of "right to health care" including its evolution in modern times are discussed. The consequences of implementing this right are discussed in economic terms, regarding the situation in the United States of America. A discussion is also included on the limitations of the role of Health Insurance as a measure to solve the problem of providing health care for all individuals.

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