Through a comparative global study of countries from all continents representing a diversity of health, legal, political, and economic systems, this book explores the role of health rights in advancing greater equality through access to health care. Does health care promote equality, or does it in fact advance the opposite result? Does inserting the idea of 'the right to health' into health systems allow the reinsertion of public values into systems that are undergoing privatization? Or does it allow for private claims to be re-articulated as 'rights', in a way that actually reinforces inequality? This volume includes studies from countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, The Netherlands, China, and Nigeria, among many others, and authors with expertise in the legal and health systems of their countries, making this a seminal study that allows readers to see the differing role of rights in various health systems.

'The Right to Health at the Public/Private Divide comes at a uniquely opportune time for American and global readers, as rights to health care dominate the center of our political debates. This sixteen-nation comparative study concludes, as Americans have discovered, that the strength of a nation’s commitment to the equitable provision of health care does not necessarily correlate with the legal articulation of health rights and that litigation can undermine as well as promote health care equity.'

Timothy S. Jost - Robert L. Willett Family Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University

'This book presents a judicious reading of a range of national interpretations of a right to health care. It offers important discussion of the mixed impact on equality of litigation. This is a must-read.'

Norman Daniels - Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health

'This excellent book is a major contribution to the emerging second wave of scholarship on the relationship between human rights and health care. It takes us well beyond the old staples of whether such a right exists, what its foundations are, and how it relates to other rights. On the basis of rich and high-quality comparative studies it presents a nuanced and necessarily complex picture of the many factors that must be taken into account in assessing the viability and desirability of different approaches to implementing the right to health.'

Philip G. Alston - John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, New York University

'Judicial analyses of each nation’s interpretation of the right to health, paired with the editors’ thoughtful investigations make this book a compelling read for those interested in the intersection of health care and human rights.'

Source: Health and Human Rights Journal