Abstract
Access to healthcare is a major concern and a significant legal issue. Its complex and multifaceted nature prompts us to question the goals it seeks to achieve. There is a delicate balance between implementing the fundamental right to health protection, the financial sustainability of the healthcare system, and structural constraints. The healthcare system emerges from the interplay of these competing goals. Moreover, in addition to these systemic goals, access to healthcare services serves different purposes. Patients now have access not only to medically necessary care but also to elective procedures, thereby increasing the complexity of healthcare challenges. Understanding what truly determines this access is challenging due to the coexistence of these two types of healthcare acts mentioned above. To better understand this phenomenon, it is essential to focus on the concept of medical necessity, a prerequisite for access to healthcare. However, in the absence of a legislative definition, this concept is difficult to define. Therefore, this study proposes criteria to grasp this subtlety by distinguishing between the right to access objectively necessary healthcare and the freedom to access subjectively necessary healthcare.