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Full-Text Articles in Law
Establishing New Legal Doctrine In Managed Care: A Model Of Judicial Response To Industrial Change, Peter D. Jacobson, Scott D. Pomfret
Establishing New Legal Doctrine In Managed Care: A Model Of Judicial Response To Industrial Change, Peter D. Jacobson, Scott D. Pomfret
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Courts are struggling with how to develop legal doctrine in challenges to the new managed care environment. In this Article, we examine how courts have responded in the past to new industries or radical transformations of existing industries. We analyze two historical antecedents, the emergence of railroads in the nineteenth century and mass production in the twentieth century, to explore how courts might react to the current transformation of the health care industry.
In doing so, we offer a model of how courts confront issues of developing legal doctrine, especially regarding liability, associated with nascent or dramatically transformed industries. Our …
Playing Doctor: Corporate Medical Practice And Medical Malpractice, E. Haavi Morreim
Playing Doctor: Corporate Medical Practice And Medical Malpractice, E. Haavi Morreim
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Although health plans once existed mainly to ensure that patients could pay for care, in recent years managed care organizations (MCOs) have attempted to limit expenditures by exercising significant influence over the kinds and levels of care provided. Some commentators argue that such influence constitutes the practice of medicine, and should subject MCOs to the same medical malpractice torts traditionally brought against physicians. Others hold that MCOs engage only in contract interpretation, and do not literally practice medicine.
This Article begins by arguing that traditional common law doctrines governing corporate practice of medicine do not precisely apply to the current …