Health Technology Assessment, Courts and the Right to Healthcare

There is an increasing mismatch between patients' expectations and public healthcare systems' affordability, leading to lawsuits challenging denial of funding. This book analyzes the impact of courts and litigation on health systems' priority-setting and rationing decisions, focusing on the judicial protection of the right to healthcare. Case studies of Brazil, Colombia, and England show that courts can institutionalize HTA, promote accountability, and impair bureaucratic capacities, offering a nuanced understanding of these paradoxes in the context of health care.

Format: Hardback
Length: 202 pages
Publication date: 31 December 2021
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Both developing and developed countries are facing a growing mismatch between what patients expect to receive from healthcare and what the public healthcare systems can afford to provide. While there has been a growing recognition of the entitlement to receive healthcare, the frustrated expectations with regards to the level of provision have led to lawsuits challenging the denial of funding for health treatments by public health systems. This book aims to analyze the impact of courts and litigation on the way health systems set priorities and make rationing decisions. In particular, it focuses on how the judicial protection of the right to healthcare can impact the institutionalization, functioning, and centrality of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) for decisions about the funding of treatment.

Based on a case study of three jurisdictions – Brazil, Colombia, and England – the book demonstrates that courts can be a key driver for the institutionalization of HTA. The case studies offer a nuanced and evidence-informed understanding of these paradoxes in the context of health care by showing how the judicial control of priority-setting decisions in health care can be used to require and control an explicit scheme for health technology assessment, but can also limit and circumvent it.

This book will be of interest to those researching Medical Law and Healthcare Policy, Human Rights Law, and Social Rights.

Weight: 553g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781138554757