Comparative Healthcare Law

This book provides a comparative and accessible analysis of key areas of healthcare law, comparing English law with selected common and civil law jurisdictions within a framework of law and medical ethics, and encompassing pivotal cases, codes and legislation. The introduction examines medical decision making, and legal and ethical frameworks in Western and non-Western cultures. Part I examines healthcare law in England and Wales, including abortion, consent, confidentiality, children, euthanasia, persistent vegetative state patients, organ transplantation, sterilisation of the mentally incapacitated, surrogacy, UK cloning proposals and the landmark conjoined twins case. Part II covers non-English common law jurisdictions such as Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and certain American jurisdictions. Civil law examples focus on France and Germany, and, where appropriate, Scandinavian countries. International perspectives on abortion laws and euthanasia are also provided. The book concludes with a comparative overview, which highlights common healthcare themes across various jurisdictions. Comparative Healthcare Law brings together information never previously accessible within the covers of one volume, making this unique book indispensable for scholars and practitioners in the field of healthcare law.

Health law and policy in Nigeria is an evolving and complex field of law, spanning a broad legal landscape and drawn from various sources. In addressing and interacting with these sources the volume advances research on health care law and policy in Nigeria and spells the beginning of what may now be formally termed the ’Nigerian health law and policy’ legal field. The collection provides a comparative analysis of relevant health policies and laws, such as reproductive and sexual health policy, organ donation and transplantation, abortion and assisted conception, with those in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and South Africa. It critically examines the duties and rights of physicians, patients, health institutions and organizations, and government parastatals against the backdrop of increased awareness of rights among patient populations. The subjects, which are discussed from a legal, ethical and policy-reform perspective, critique current legislation and policies and make suggestions for reform. The volume presents a cohesive, comparative, and comprehensive analysis of the state of health law and policy in Nigeria with those in the US, Canada, South Africa, and the UK. As such, it provides a valuable comparison between Western and Non-Western countries.

This book presents balanced coverage of the four major areas of concern of health law -- health care organization and finance, the obligations of health care professionals and institutions to patients, bioethics, and public health law. For each of these topics, it presents a carefully edited collection of cases, statutes, and readings. While the book contains many sources from English-speaking, common-law jurisdictions, it also includes a wealth of sources from continental Europe and Japan, as well as from developing countries. Several sources have been translated specifically for this book. Whenever possible, the readings are by authors from the countries whose laws are discussed in the reading. Also, most sources are truly comparative; that is, they analyze the laws of not just one, but of several jurisdictions.While this book is intended in part to inform health policy, it is not just another book about comparative health policy. Rather, it focuses uniquely on comparative health law -- how law, legal systems, and legal institutions influence health care recipients, professionals, institutions, and systems. Thus, for example, this book is not so much concerned with how various health care systems ration care as it is with the role of the courts or of administrative agencies in health care rationing.This is the first book to offer a text for teaching courses in comparative health law and bioethics in American law, public health, medical or nursing schools. It is also ideally suited for the comparative emphasis of summer courses abroad or for anyone interested in comparative health law.

This new edition updates and expands the first. Readings in Comparative Health Law and Bioethics presents balanced comparative coverage of the four major areas of health law: health care organization and finance, the obligations of health care professionals and institutions to patients, bioethics, and public health law. For each of these topics, it presents a carefully edited collection of cases, statutes, and readings. While the book contains many sources from English-speaking, common-law jurisdictions, it also includes a wealth of sources from continental Europe and Japan, as well as from developing countries. Several sources have been translated specifically for this book. Whenever possible, the readings are by authors from the countries whose laws are discussed in the reading. Also, most readings are truly comparative; that is, they analyze the laws of not just one, but of several jurisdictions. While this book is intended in part to inform health policy, it is not just another book about comparative health policy. Rather, Jost focuses uniquely on comparative health law -- how law, legal systems, and legal institutions influence health care recipients, professionals, institutions, and systems. Thus, for example, this book is not so much concerned with how various health care systems ration care as it is with the role of the courts or of administrative agencies in health care rationing. This is the first book to offer a text for teaching courses in comparative health law and bioethics in American law, public health, medical or nursing schools. It is also ideally suited for the comparative emphasis of summer courses abroad or for anyone interested in comparative health law. "In this initial work, Tim Jost has provided us with a thoughtful and carefully arranged set of materials ideal for classroom use. Let's hope he will craft an equally successful follow-up volume in the near future." -- The Journal of Legal Medicine, 2002, on the first edition

"Abstract: The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Health Law addresses some of the most critical issues facing scholars, legislators, and judges. How, for example, can the law protect against threats to public health that can quickly cross national borders? How can it ensure access to affordable health care or regulate the pharmaceutical industry? Indeed, when matters of life and death literally hang in the balance, it is especially important for policymakers to get things right, and the making of policy can be greatly enhanced by learning from the successes and failures of approaches taken in other countries. Where there are "common challenges" in law and health, there is much to be gained from experiences elsewhere. Accordingly, this Handbook considers key health law questions from a comparative perspective. In health law, common challenges are frequent. In addition to those mentioned above, there are questions about addressing the social determinants of health (e.g., poverty and pollution), organizing health systems to optimize use of available resources, ensuring that physicians provide care of the highest quality, protecting patient privacy in a data-driven world, and properly balancing patient autonomy with the interest in preserving life when reproductive and end-of-life decisions are made. This Handbook's wide scope and comparative perspective on health law are particularly timely. Economic globalization has made it increasingly important for different countries to harmonize their legal rules. The many paired and complementary chapters that cover law in American and European contexts represent a novel approach that should allow scholars, students, and policymakers to develop new insight into this complex field. Keywords: health law; comparative law; EU law; UK law; US law; public health; healthcare; social determinants of health; public policy"--

Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this convenient volume provides comprehensive analysis of the law affecting the physician-patient relationship in Canada. Cutting across the traditional compartments with which lawyers are familiar, medical law is concerned with issues arising from this relationship, and not with the many wider juridical relations involved in the broader field of health care law. After a general introduction, the book systematically describes law related to the medical profession, proceeding from training, licensing, and other aspects of access to the profession, through disciplinary and professional liability and medical ethics considerations and quality assurance, to such aspects of the physician-patient relationship as rights and duties of physicians and patients, consent, privacy, and access to medical records. Also covered are specific issues such as organ transplants, human medical research, abortion, and euthanasia, as well as matters dealing with the physician in relation to other health care providers, health care insurance, and the health care system. Succinct and practical, this book will prove to be of great value to professional organizations of physicians, nurses, hospitals, and relevant government agencies. Lawyers representing parties with interests in Canada will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its comparative value as a contribution to the study of medical law in the international context.

This monograph is the most comprehensive comparative law study of legal responsibility arising from medical care presently available. It is written for doctors as well as health care administrators and legal professionals. Focusing on the problems of civil liability, it presents the development, points of contact with, and differences between the modern law of medical liability stemming from both the Common Law and Civil Law traditions of England, Scotland, Eire, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States, South Africa, France, Belgium, West Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. It demonstrates the extent to which both problems of medical law and trends towards their solution are already familiar in these legal systems. The work describes principles and trends, not by confronting the reader with national reports' and separate chapters on different legal systems; rather, the relevant legal problems are analyzed from an integrative, comparative viewpoint. The main thrust of the presentation is the analysis of numerous court decisions -- the number of which is rising ominously in the United States -- on the civil liability of doctors and hospitals for damages arising from substandard treatment or inadequate disclosure of information to the patient. References to the legal and medical literature, indexes, and a refined system of cross-references, together with an important collection of appendices covering legal and ethical declarations make this work accessible as a handbook and reference work for the legal and social problems encountered today in the wide area of law, ethics, and medicine.

The issue of justice in the field of health care is becoming more central with concerns over access, cost and provision. Obamacare in the United States and the Health and Social Care Act 2012 in the United Kingdom are key examples illustrating the increasing pressure put on governments to find just and equitable solutions to the problem of health care provision. Justice and Profit in Health Care Law explores the influence of justice principles on the elaboration of laws reforming health care systems. By examining the role played by key for-profit stakeholders (doctors, employers and insurers), it tracks the evolution of distributive norms for the allocation of health care resources in western welfare states. Essentially, this book sheds light on the place given to justice in the health care law-making process in order to understand the place we wish to give these principles in future health care reforms.