Suk, Julie C. --- "Preventive Health at Work" [2012] ELECD 776; in Clark, S. David (ed), "Comparative Law and Society" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Comparative Law and Society

Editor(s): Clark, S. David

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849803618

Section: Chapter 19

Section Title: Preventive Health at Work

Author(s): Suk, Julie C.

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

19 Preventive health at work
Julie C. Suk*


1 INTRODUCTION

The delivery of preventive healthcare is a central challenge for overall healthcare reform in
the United States. Much more is spent on healthcare providers and delivery in the US than
in most other countries, but US health outcomes are much worse, in significant part due
to the cost of treating chronic disease. European countries have done much better than
the United States on this score. The American healthcare crisis has invited comparative
perspectives, as many US reformers seek to learn from, and perhaps import, successful
European models.
This chapter exposes one important but often ignored aspect of preventive healthcare
in European countries: the integration of preventive medicine into employment law. In
France, for instance, the law requires every employer to provide a workplace doctor, who
performs regular checkups on each employee, identifies workplace health risks and makes
policy recommendations to the employer to protect employees' health. As American
employers begin to experiment with onsite preventive health clinics, what might they learn
from the French experience? Rather than proposing a transplant of French or European
workplace health services on American soil, this chapter explores the reasons why such a
transplant would flounder, not only politically, but also legally. The purpose is to develop
a critical perspective on the wide range of social and legal factors that impede preventive
health services in the United States.


2 THE FRENCH LAW OF OCCUPATIONAL MEDICINE

2.1 Origins

French law has required every employer to ...