Law Commons^™

Thirty Years Of Solicitude: Antitrust Law And Physician Cartels, Thomas L. Greaney

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the last thirty years the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have challenged dozens of physician cartels, networks, and other arrangements that they alleged constituted price fixing or other restraints of trade under the antitrust laws. In addition, the antitrust agencies have issued numerous advisory opinions, published detailed statements of enforcement policy, and made dozens of public statements on the issue of physician collaboration. The puzzle explored in this essay is why the government's deployment of unparalleled enforcement resources has not curtailed physician attempts to engage in collective bargaining and other attempts to restrain price competition. It …

Striving For Equality, But Settling For The Status Quo In Health Care: Is Title Vi More Illusory Than Real?, Ruqaiijah A. Yearby

All Faculty Scholarship

Prior to 1964, racial segregation and discrimination in health care was government funded under the Hospital Survey and Construction Act, better known as the Hill-Burton Act. Specifically, section 622(f) of the Hill- Burton Act proscribed federal funding for “separate but equal” health care services. The United States tried to put an end to racial discrimination in the health care system by intervening in a private action that challenged the constitutionality of the Hill-Burton Act and with the enactment of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned racial discrimination in health care for institutions receiving federal funding. …

The Road From Massachusetts To Missouri: What Will It Take For Other States To Replicate Massachusetts Health Reform?, Sidney D. Watson, Timothy Mcbride, Heather Bednarek, Muhammad Islam

All Faculty Scholarship

In April 2006, the Massachusetts Legislature passed Chapter 58 of the Acts of 2006, An Act Providing Access to Affordable, Quality, Accountable Health Care, sweeping health reform legislation designed to achieve nearly universal health insurance coverage.¹ While Massachusetts is not the first state in recent years to enact legislation intended to achieve near-universal coverage, its efforts have attracted the most national attention and the most notice from other states interested in duplicating the Massachusetts Model.

Fortuitous political and budgetary circumstances converged in Massachusetts to move reform forward. First, stakeholders and elected officials worked together over a number of years …

Polluting Medical Judgment? False Assumptions In The Pursuit Of False Claims Regarding Off-Label Prescribing, Sandra H. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

Over half of the FDA-approved prescription medications taken by patients are prescribed for a different purpose, in a higher or lower dose, for a discrete population, or over a longer period of time than that for which the drug was approved. Safety and efficacy concerns attract the most attention; but critical benefits in fostering innovation and providing patients with medications that may be uniquely effective for them are often overlooked.

The current dominant public policy response to off-label prescribing addresses this practice as a particular breed of financial conflicts of interest in which pharmaceutical firms pollute medical judgment by appealing …

Striving For Equality, But Settling For The Status Quo: Is Title Vi More Illusory Than Real?, Ruqaiijah Yearby

All Faculty Scholarship

A plethora of empirical studies, such as the Institute of Medicine’s Unequal Treatment report, have shown that racial inequities in health care continue at the same level as in the Jim Crow Era. Innumerable reasons have been offered to explain the continuation of these health inequities, including racial discrimination. Congress enacted Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to put an end to racial discrimination in health care, but it still persists. Given the regulation and enforcement mechanisms established under Title VI explicitly aimed at remedying racial discrimination such as that directed at elderly African-Americans it is unbelievable …

The Health Care Choice Act: The Individual Insurance Market And The Politics Of 'Choice', Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

Traditionally, employer-sponsored group insurance plans have been the backbone of health insurance coverage in the United States. While it is still true that most Americans get their health insurance through their employment, the erosion of employer-sponsored health insurance has increased the ranks of the uninsured and pushed more workers, retirees and their families into the individual insurance market. In 2005, for example, nine percent of the population, or nearly 27 million people, turned to individual policies for health insurance coverage.

The Health Care Choice Act of 2005 (the "Act") currently before Congress aims to reform perceived problems in the individual …

Book Review: Reviewing Susan Starr Sered And Rushike Fernandopulle, Uninsured In America (2007), Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

Book Review of Susan Starr Sered and Rushike Fernandopulle, Uninsured in America (2007).