Equal Care

"This work illustrates how health inequity is social failure and the only true cures are political"--

"A fascinating and genuinely accessible guide....Educating, enjoyable, and delightfully unscary."—Classical Music What if Bach and Mozart heard richer, more dramatic chords than we hear in music today? What sonorities and moods have we lost in playing music in "equal temperament"—the equal division of the octave into twelve notes that has become our standard tuning method? Thanks to How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony, "we may soon be able to hear for ourselves what Beethoven really meant when he called B minor 'black'" (Wall Street Journal).In this "comprehensive plea for more variety in tuning methods" (Kirkus Reviews), Ross W. Duffin presents "a serious and well-argued case" (Goldberg Magazine) that "should make any contemporary musician think differently about tuning" (Saturday Guardian). Some images in the ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.

Introduces a vision for the future of health equity and explains practical policy measures for how to achieve it. Health inequity is one of the defining problems of our time. But current efforts to address the problem focus on mitigating the harms of injustice rather than confronting injustice itself. In Equal Care, Seth A. Berkowitz, MD, MPH, offers an innovative vision for the future of health equity by examining the social mechanisms that link injustice to poor health. He also presents practical policies designed to create a system of social relations that ensures equal care for everyone. As Berkowitz illustrates, the project of social democracy works to improve health by bringing relationships of equality to the sites of human cooperation: in civil society, in political processes, and in economic activities. This book synthesizes three elements necessary for such a project—normative justification, mechanistic knowledge, and technical proficiency—into a practical vision of how to create health equity. Drawing from the fields of medicine, social epidemiology, sociology, economics, political science, philosophy, and more, Berkowitz makes clear that health inequity is social failure embodied, and the only true cures are political. Equal Care is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of health equity.

Their set of original studies of household chemicals, energy audits, and food risk labeling establishes guidelines for the design and evaluation of these informational regulations. How does risk labeling information on hazardous household chemicals and pesticides influence consumer behavior? While many studies speculate on the effects of risk information, Magat and Viscusi draw on a series of extensive surveys to assess the likely response. Their set of original studies of household chemicals, energy audits, and food risk labeling establishes guidelines for the design and evaluation of these informational regulations. Their findings also include new estimates of the valuation of nonfatal health risks, the first estimates in the literature of the role of altruism, and an assessment of the influence of irrational responses to risk. Although economists suggest that giving consumers information about potentially hazardous goods is preferable to direct regulation of product content, implementation of information regulation raises a host of issues that need to be addressed. Magat and Viscusi document the cognitive limitations that consumers have in processing information and break new ground by showing how, given this behavior, the informational regulations should be designed.Case studies assess the degree to which different kinds of consumers notice, remember, and heed printed warnings in a range of wordings and formats. They then examine risk valuation, showing how much consumers are willing to pay for increased product safety under various conditions. A concluding chapter synthesizes the results and discusses their implications for regulatory policy.

The relationship between gender and welfare states is of key importance in understanding welfare states and gender equality and inequality. Western welfare states of the post-war era were built on assumptions about gender difference: they treated men as breadwinners and women as carers. Now governments are committed in principle to gender equality. But how far have they come from male breadwinner assumptions to gender equality assumptions? How much do gender differences continue in UK social policy and social practice? The book analyses the male breadwinner model in terms of power, employment, care, time and income, providing a framework for chapters which ask about policies and practices for gender equality in each of these. This new approach to analysis of gender equality in social welfare contextualises national policies and debates within comparative theoretical analysis and data, making the volume interesting to a wide audience.

This book brings together the latest thinking in social justice and health policy and seeks to integrate a capabilities perspective with the demands of health and economic policies that impact on health

The right to equal access to health care is a fundamental principle that is part of human rights. For victims of a violation of the right to equal access to health care, it is important that a judicial or quasi-judicial human rights body can adjudicate their complaints in this regard. Justiciability contributes to the protection and realization of the right to equal access to health care and further determines the meaning of this right. The justiciability of the human right to equal access to health care is complex. It is one of the economic, social, and cultural rights, and ever since the emergence of these rights, their justiciability has been a contentious issue. Moreover, in practice, it is much more difficult for an alleged violation of an economic, social, or cultural right to be subject of review by a court of law or a quasi-judicial procedure than it is for a civil or political right. Nevertheless, over the last two decades, several developments have strengthened the justiciability of rights. This book analyzes the justiciability of the human right to equal access to health care. It examines how cases concerning unequal access to health care would be dealt with by judicial and quasi-judicial human rights bodies and distills the elements that can be expected to play a role in the assessment of such cases. First, the book provides for an extensive analysis of the legal framework of the right to equal access to health care, its entitlements, and the corresponding State obligations. Subsequently, it addresses what arguments are brought forward and how such rights are adjudicated in practice by the various judicial and quasi-judicial human rights bodies. Furthermore, the case law of three human rights bodies - the European Committee of Social Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Human Rights Committee - is examined in detail in order to analyze how these bodies assess cases concerning discrimination and how elements of economic, social, and cultural rights are taken into account under the various equality and non-discrimination provisions. Finally, the different criteria and elements that can be expected to play a role in the justiciability of cases are presented. (Series: School of Human Rights Research - Vol. 53)

Essays on the emerging legal issues surrounding age discrimination and moves to create equality in the EU and UK.