(2012) 30 Windsor Y B Access Just 247 SO LONG AS YOU HAVE YOUR HEALTH: HEALTH CARE DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA AND PROCEDURALIST HUMAN RIGHTS

• Main Author: Alana Klein
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Windsor 2012-10-01
• Series: Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice
• Online Access: https://wyaj.uwindsor.ca/index.php/wyaj/article/view/4377

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.