Is Two-Tier Health Care the Future?
- Publisher
- University of Ottawa Press
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2020
- Subjects
- Medical Law & Legislation
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780776628097
- Publish Date
- Apr 2020
- List Price
- $29.99
Library Ordering Options
Description
Canadians are deeply worried about wait times for health care. Entrepreneurial doctors and private clinics are bringing Charter challenges to existing laws restrictive of a two-tier system. They argue that Canada is an outlier among developed countries in limiting options to jump the queue.
This book explores whether a two-tier model is a solution.
In Is Two-Tier Health Care the Future?, leading researchers explore the public and private mix in Canada, Australia, Germany, France, and Ireland. They explain the history and complexity of interactions between public and private funding of health care and the many regulations and policies found in different countries used to both inhibit and sometimes to encourage two-tier care, such as tax breaks.
This edited collection provides critical evidence on the different approaches to regulating two-tier care across different countries and what could work in Canada.
This book is published in English.
About the authors
Colleen M. Flood FRSC is a University of Ottawa Research Chair in Health Law & Policy and inaugural director of the Ottawa Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics.
Bryan Thomas is an Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa. His research spans a wide range of topics including Canadian and comparative health law and policy, health rights litigation, long-term care, global health law, and the role of religious argument in legal and political discourse. Dr. Thomas holds an SJD from University of Toronto and a Master’s degree in philosophy from Dalhousie.
Sara Allin is an assistant professor with the Institute of Health, Policy and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, and Director of Operations with the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.
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Lorraine Doetter's profile page
Stephen Duckett is president and chief executive officer of Alberta Health Services.
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Noushon Farmanara's profile page
Vanessa Gruben is an associate professor and a member of the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Common Law, where she teaches health law and family law. Her research focuses on the legal and ethical aspects of assisted reproduction, including the constitutionality of Canada’s Assisted Human Reproduction Act, the legal relationship between egg donors and their physicians, the constitutionality of anonymous sperm and egg donation, access to reproductive technologies, and the existing gaps in provincial law for families created through third-party reproduction. Gruben’s work is funded by the Social Science and Humanities and Research Council, Canadian Blood Services, and the Foundation for Legal Research. She is a co-editor of the fifth edition of Canadian Health Law and Policy (LexisNexis Canada, 2017).
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Martha Jackman, Professor, Faculty of Law, French Common Law Program, University of Ottawa and Co-Director (Academic) of the SSHRC-CURA Research Project “Reconceiving Human Rights Practice,” online: www.socialrightscura.ca.
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Gregory P. Marchildon is a Canada Research Chair in Public Policy and Economic History at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Regina. He was executive director of the Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada (the Romanow Commission). His most recent books include Health Systems in Transition: Canada (2013) and Nunavut: A Health System Profile (2013).
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Amélie Quesnel-Vallée holds the Canada Research Chair in Policies and Health Inequalities and is a professor in the Department of Ethics, Equity and Policy and the Department of Sociology at McGill University.
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Rikke Siersbaek's profile page
Stephen Thomas is a Toronto-based writer of fiction, nonfiction, plays, and Facebook statuses. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Hazlitt, Playboy, The Atlantic's CityLab blog, DIAGRAM, Little Brother, The Seneca Review, The Fanzine, The Puritan, and Definitely Not the Opera (CBC-Radio One). He has been awarded a Truman Capote Scholarship, an Edward F. Albee Fellowship (Summer 2012), has been nominated for the Journey Prize (2010, 2013), a National Magazine Award (2015), and Best American Experimental Writing (2015). The Jokes was shortlisted for the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors of Contemporary Literature, and is Thomas's debut flash-fiction collection, launching in the Spring of 2016. Learn more at www.stephenthomaswriter.com.
Carolyn Tuohy is a professor emeritus of political science and founding fellow in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto.
Excerpt: Is Two-Tier Health Care the Future? (edited by Colleen Flood & Bryan Thomas; contributions by Sara Allin, Sarah Barry, Sara Burke, Danielle Dawson, Lorraine Doetter, Stephen Duckett, Noushon Farmanara, Vanessa Gruben, Jeremiah Hurley, Martha Jackman, Bridget Johnston, Gregory Marchildon, Fiona McDonald, Rachel McKay, Jonathan Mullen, Zeynep Or, Aurélie Pierre, Amélie Quesnel-Vallée, David Rudoler, Achim Schmid, Rikke Siersbaek, Stephen Thomas & Carolyn Tuohy)
“….overcoming the many barriers and interest groups opposed to universal medicare was a hard-won political war waged over many years, particularly with respect to medical associations who fought tooth and nail against the prospect of a public health care system and various politicians who were ideologically in favour of maintaining a significant role for private health insurance. The melange of laws that exist across the provinces, and the Canada Health Act itself, are thus a product of the particular history and context of medicare, including political accommodations necessary to bring doctors into the public plan (for example, they are not public employees but independent contractors mostly paid on a fee-for-service basis with still relatively little governmental control over their clinical decision-making).”
Editorial Reviews
divsegoe ui",="" system-ui,="" "apple="" color="" emoji",="" "segoe="" ui="" sans-serif;="" 14px;"="">Is Two-Tier Health Care the Future?, is the best book in years about the past, present and future of Canadian Medicare. The book, with its compelling introduction by Colleen Flood and Bryan Thomas, is well written and well edited. Unlike many edited volumes, authors have written coherent, linked, chapters on the most controversial topics in Canadian medical care. These prominently include the history of intense disputes over private and public finance of hospitals and physicians, and address how and why private finance of Canadian medical care has always been and will continue to be so controversial. The most unusual feature of Canadian health care policy—illuminated by chapters on medical finance in other rich democracies—is how judicial decision making in Medicare’s past and present has become dominated by constitutional law and disputes about how much market allocation is tolerable in an egalitarian program like Canada’s Medicare. How that came to be over the past few decades and what the BC Cambie Clinic case means for the future is what this serious work of scholarship provides.
Theodore R. Marmor