The Right to Health Care: Ethical Considerations

This book provides an in-depth ethical analysis of the right to health care by contrasting privatized with socialized approaches. It pays special attention to how a socialized approach can be implemented in the context of limited resources and offers a way of integrating allocation decisions at the policy level with institutional and hands-on decision-making. It also discusses how the right to health care translates into duties on part of the members of society. In an Appendix, it suggests how, in time of need, the TRIPS Agreement allows countries to side-step patent regulations that would otherwise raise the cost of patented healthcare products beyond what a particular society is able to afford. The book is of interest not only to scholars but also to healthcare policy makers, administrators and healthcare professionals, as well as to patients themselves.

Eike-Henner W. Kluge—B.A.(Calgary), A.M., Ph.D. (Mich.)—taught at various universities in the USA and Canada before coming to the University of Victoria. In 1989, he was asked by the Canadian Medical Association to establish the Department of Ethics and Legal Affairs and was its first director. He was the first expert witness in medical ethics recognized by Canadian courts and has acted in that capacity in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario. He has been a consultant to Health Canada, various provincial Ministries of Health and Health Regions, as well as to the Office of the B.C. Police Complaint Commissioner, and has presented invited testimony to Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Committees.

He has written three books and numerous articles on assisted suicide and deliberate death and was the ethics consultant for Sue Rodriguez in her challenge of sec. 241 (b) of the Criminal Code (prohibition of assisted suicide) which, although it failed, ultimatelyled to the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General) which struck down that section and led to the 2016 legalization of physician assisted death. From 2004 to 2010, he was the Canadian Bioethics Society’s delegate to the Canadian Council on Animal Care. He is a member of WG4 (Security in Health Information Systems) of the International Medical Informatics Association and the author of its Code of Ethics (translated into 11 languages) in 2003 and of the accompanying Handbook of Ethics for Health Informatics Professionals. In 2005, he received the Award for Research Excellence of the UVic Faculty of Humanities, and in 2007, he was awarded the Abbyann Lynch Medal in Bioethics by the Royal Society of Canada. In 2017, he was awarded a Certificate of Recognition by the International Medical Informatics Association for his service to international medical informatics and for the revision of the Association’s Code of Ethics.He authored, co-authored, or edited 13 books and over 90 articles in refereed journals and has done national and international media work regarding ethical issues in health care. Further information available on request.