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Priority rules as solutions to conflicting health care rights

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Abstract

Recent health legislation in Norway significantly increases access to specialist care within a legally binding time frame. The paper describes the contents of the new legislation and introduces some of the challenges with proliferations of rights to health care. The paper describes some of the challenges associated with the proliferation of legal rights to health care. It explains the benefits of assessing the new law in the light of a rights framework. It then analyses the problematic aspects of establishing additional priority rules as solutions to rights conflicts. It then defends adequacy criteria for acceptable priority rules when such rules are unavoidable. It finally defends our proposed method and explores concrete applications.

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Notes

  1. https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1999-07-02-63/KAPITTEL_2#KAPITTEL_2.

  2. http://www.helsebiblioteket.no/retningslinjer/prioriteringsveiledere.

  3. https://www.nav.no/no/Person/Arbeid/Oppfolging+av+arbeidssokere/Relatert+informasjon/Raskere+behandling+hos+spesialist.346117.cms.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge insightful and constructive comments from Jeremy Aidem and two referees of this journal. Gopal Sreenivasan, Peter Vallentyne, and participants of the work-in-progress seminar at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, The University of Bergen, provided very valuable comments on previous versions of this article.

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Correspondence to Anna-Karin Andersson.

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Andersson, AK., Lindemark, F. & Johansson, K.A. Priority rules as solutions to conflicting health care rights. Med Health Care and Philos 20, 67–76 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-016-9728-z

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