Annals of Health Law Volume 19 Article 5 Issue 3 Spring 2010 2010 Charter Rights & Health Care Funding: A Typology of Canadian Health Rights Litigation Colleen M. Flood University of Toronto Y.Y. Brandon Chen Canadian Civil Liberties Association Follow this and additional works at: http://lawecommons.luc.edu/annals Part of the Health Law and Policy Commons Recommended Citation Colleen M. Flood & Y.Y. B. Chen Charter Rights & Health Care Funding: A Typology of Canadian Health Rights Litigation, 19 Annals Health L. 479 (2010). Available at: http://lawecommons.luc.edu/annals/vol19/iss3/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by LAW eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Annals of Health Law by an authorized administrator of LAW eCommons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Flood and Chen: Charter Rights & Health Care Funding: A Typology of Canadian Heal Charter Rights & Health Care Funding: A Typology of Canadian Health Rights Litigation Colleen M Flood YY. Brandon Chen** I. INTRODUCTION As biomedical technologies continue to advance, Canadian Medicare, like other health care systems around the world, faces an ever more difficult task of meeting rising consumer expectations with finite resources. Although it is commonly accepted that some limits on the coverage of the public health care system are necessary in the interest of sustainability, there is as yet no consensus among the Canadian public on where those limits should be drawn. While the Canada Health Act mandates public funding for "medically necessary" hospital services and "medically required" physician services,' it offers no definition of what constitutes medical necessity.