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Instrumental And Transformative Medical Technology, Nicole Huberfeld

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article considers how medical technologies impact universality in health care. The universality principle, as embodied in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), eliminated widespread discriminatory practices and provided financial assistance to those otherwise unable to become insured—a democratizing federal act that was intended to stabilize health care policy nationwide. This Article posits that medical technology, as with all of medicine, can be universalizing or exclusionary and that this status roughly correlates to its being “instrumental technology” or “transformative technology.” Instrumental technology acts as a tool of medicine and often serves an existing aspect of health care; in …