In the fourth installment of the Faculty Workshop Series, sponsored by the Frances Lewis Law Center, Professor Colleen M. Flood, Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and the Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, came to speak on October 4 about her new article, Charter Rights & Health Care Funding: A Typology of Canadian Health Rights Litigation.
Professor Flood spoke about the Canadian Healthcare system and its mandate to fund medically necessary hospital services and medically required physician services. However, the Canada Health Act provides no further guidance as to what is medically necessary or required. Thus, there has been a surge of lawsuits trying to determine what services should be publicly funded. Professor Flood seeks to create a typology rubric to analyze these cases, hoping to ultimately address the question: is litigation ultimately good or bad for the healthcare system as a whole? She presented her initial testing conditions, the cases she has analyzed thus far, and in the process, and spawned a healthy discussion from everyone in attendance.
Thanks to Professor Flood for coming down to the States to speak with the faculty here at W&L Law.
