Comparative Health Law (LAWS90057)

This subject provides an opportunity to learn about how different societies grapple with common challenges in health care systems and to consider whether and how these comparisons can be helpful in guiding change within a particular system. While human biology is similar worldwide, the economic, social, and ethical aspects of health care are reflected through the prism of each society’s culture, history and political framework. The legal responses to these economic, social and ethical debates therefore can vary from one society to another. This subject will explore comparative approaches to topics ranging from the structure and financing of the health care system to legal aspects of reproduction and death. The subject, while referencing Australian approaches, will use Canada and the United States as the base for comparison and will explore the approaches adopted in other countries as well.

Professor Bobinski recently completed serving as the Dean of the Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia, Canada. She has taught Comparative Health Law in Canada and the United States. She recently served as the President of the American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics and as a member of the Canadian Public Health Officer's Ethics Advisory Committee, and previously directed a top-ranked health law program in the United States.

Principal topics will include comparative approaches to health law and policy rules in areas such as:

• The right to health and health care financing
• Regulation and/or licensing of health care professionals
• Quality of care
• Contraception, abortion and sterilisation
• Fetal conflicts
• Assisted reproduction, including the implications of advances in genetics
• Consent to or refusal of care, including cases involving death and dying
• Public health law including traditional aspects (eg contagious diseases) and new areas such as public health approaches to obesity.

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