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Full-Text Articles in Law

Hiv And The Ada: What Is A Direct Threat?, Dawn-Marie Harmon Dec 2017

Hiv And The Ada: What Is A Direct Threat?, Dawn-Marie Harmon

Maine Law Review

Anne, a surgical technician at a local hospital, recently learned that she was HIV-positive. She works in the emergency room and, as a part of her job, she hands surgical instruments to doctors performing emergency surgery. It is a fast paced and unpredictable environment. Her hands often come in contact with sharp instruments. Although Anne has never put her hands into a patient's body cavity, there is a remote possibility that she may need to do so in the future. There is always a possibility, however small, that she will cut herself and come into blood-to-blood contact with a doctor …


Access To Prescription Drugs: A Normative Economic Approach To Pharmacist Conscience Clause Legislation, Joanna K. Sax Oct 2017

Access To Prescription Drugs: A Normative Economic Approach To Pharmacist Conscience Clause Legislation, Joanna K. Sax

Maine Law Review

Over the past several years, many states introduced legislation that protects a pharmacist’s decision to refuse to fill a prescription. Termed “conscience clauses,” these pieces of legislation allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription because of moral or religious objections without fear of legal repercussions. In 2006, for example, twenty-one states considered legislation that permits pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions; some bills focus on contraception alone, while others are not specific to any one type of medication. Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, and South Dakota have state laws that provide legal protection to pharmacists who refuse to fill …


Tipping The Scales?: Maine Adopts The Continuing Negligent Treatment Doctrine In Baker V. Farrand, Michael P. Beers Oct 2017

Tipping The Scales?: Maine Adopts The Continuing Negligent Treatment Doctrine In Baker V. Farrand, Michael P. Beers

Maine Law Review

In Baker v. Farrand, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, held that for a series of related negligent acts or omissions committed by a health care provider or practitioner, a single cause of action “accrues” under the Maine Health Security Act (hereinafter MHSA) on the date of the last act or omission that contributed to the plaintiff’s injury. Hence, in situations where a physician provides continuing negligent treatment to a patient in which each and every one of the physician’s actions are negligent, the MHSA’s three-year statute of limitations does not begin to run until the …


Anthem Health Plans Of Maine, Inc. V. Superintendent Of Insurance: Judicial Restraint Or Judicial Abdication?, David E. Sorensen Oct 2017

Anthem Health Plans Of Maine, Inc. V. Superintendent Of Insurance: Judicial Restraint Or Judicial Abdication?, David E. Sorensen

Maine Law Review

When Maine’s Superintendent of Insurance told the state’s largest health insurer that it could not profit in 2009, her decision ended up on appeal before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, in Anthem Health Plans of Maine, Inc. v. Superintendent of Insurance. As part of its annual rate approval process, Anthem had requested a 3% profit and risk margin on its individual lines of health insurance in Maine. Superintendent Mila Kofman denied this request under her statutory authority to deny any rate increase proposals that are “excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory.” The Superintendent held that a …


Of Asthma And Ashtrays: Examining The Rights Of And Exploring Ways To Protect Maine Tenants Living In Multi-Unit Rental Housing Who Are Involuntarily Exposed To Secondhand Tobacco Smoke In Their Homes, Amy K. Olfene Apr 2017

Of Asthma And Ashtrays: Examining The Rights Of And Exploring Ways To Protect Maine Tenants Living In Multi-Unit Rental Housing Who Are Involuntarily Exposed To Secondhand Tobacco Smoke In Their Homes, Amy K. Olfene

Maine Law Review

Toxins found in tobacco smoke are deadly, and there is no safe level of exposure. Secondhand smoke contains over 7,000 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer in humans. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has declared secondhand tobacco smoke a Group A carcinogen, a rating “reserved for those compounds or mixtures which have been shown to cause cancer in humans, based on studies in human populations.” Exposure to tobacco smoke can cause a number of diseases and ailments in both smokers and nonsmokers; in addition, such exposure can exacerbate existing illnesses. In the United States, …


Compelled To Testify: An Evaluation Of 32 M.R.S.A. § 7005 And The Privilege For Maine Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Juliana Kirkland O'Brien Feb 2017

Compelled To Testify: An Evaluation Of 32 M.R.S.A. § 7005 And The Privilege For Maine Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Juliana Kirkland O'Brien

Maine Law Review

The mental health industry is big business: the National Institute of Mental Health reports that in 2012, 43.7 million people ages eighteen and older (18.6% of U.S. adults) experienced issues associated with a mental illness. In Maine, about 51,000 adults and approximately 13,000 children suffer from a serious mental illness. According to the World Health Organization, mental illness “accounts for more disability in developed countries than any other group of illnesses, including cancer and heart disease” and in Maine, mental health issues coupled with substance abuse is the leading cause of disability and death for Mainers between ages fifteen and …


Medical Debt As A Cause Of Consumer Bankruptcy, Daniel A. Austin Feb 2017

Medical Debt As A Cause Of Consumer Bankruptcy, Daniel A. Austin

Maine Law Review

In his 2009 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama pleaded with Americans to support healthcare reform, stating, “This is cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds.” That jaw-dropping statistic was based on a study co-authored by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D. Mass.) (then a professor at Harvard Law School), which concluded that 62.1% of consumer bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies. The figure has been widely cited by lawmakers, academics, and the media in support of expanded government healthcare. Recently, Senator Warren co-sponsored legislation to create a new category of those filing for bankruptcy: the “medically distressed …


Mayhew V. Hickox: Balancing Maine's Public's Health With Personal Liberties During The Ebola "Crisis", Benjamin W. Dexter Jan 2017

Mayhew V. Hickox: Balancing Maine's Public's Health With Personal Liberties During The Ebola "Crisis", Benjamin W. Dexter

Maine Law Review

By the 1960s, methods in the detection and treatment (and consequently improvements in the survival rates) of infectious diseases had advanced so significantly that "[d]iseases seemed destined to all but disappear." But the reemergence of previously "eradicated" diseases, and the emergence of new diseases that seemed all-but-untreatable, such as Ebola virus, soon put to rest the euphoria of medical advancement. Ebola virus is one of the most dangerous infectious diseases to emerge in the twentieth century, and through media sources, including movies, television shows, and new reporting, has become one of the most feared. Despite public misunderstanding regarding the causes, …