Book excerpt: Through a comparative global study of countries from all continents representing a diversity of health, legal, political, and economic systems, this book explores the role of health rights in advancing greater equality through access to health care. Does health care promote equality, or does it in fact advance the opposite result? Does inserting the idea of 'the right to health' into health systems allow the reinsertion of public values into systems that are undergoing privatization? Or does it allow for private claims to be re-articulated as 'rights', in a way that actually reinforces inequality? This volume includes studies from countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, The Netherlands, China, and Nigeria, among many others, and authors with expertise in the legal and health systems of their countries, making this a seminal study that allows readers to see the differing role of rights in various health systems.