Law Commons^™

Charging Abortion, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

As long as Roe v. Wade remained good law, prosecutors could largely avoid the question of abortion. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has now placed prosecutors at the forefront of the abortion wars. Some chief prosecutors in antiabortion states have pledged to not enforce antiabortion laws, whereas others are targeting even out-of-state providers. This post-Dobbs reality, wherein the ability to obtain an abortion depends not only on the politics of one’s state but also the policies of one’s local district attorney, has received minimal scrutiny from legal scholars.

Prosecutors have broad charging discretion, …

Systemic Failures In Health Care Oversight, Julie L. Campbell

Georgia Law Review

Hospitals are intentionally shirking their duty to identify and report incompetent medical practitioners, and it is causing catastrophic injuries to patients. Why are hospitals doing this? Two decades of health care reforms have changed the way physicians and hospitals interact in the U.S. health care system, and as a result, the traditional health care oversight tools no longer work to ensure physician competence. With three out of four physicians now employees of hospitals or health care systems, hospitals have become the guardians of both the internal and external warning systems designed to flag incompetent practitioners. As the guardians, hospitals are …

Patient Autonomy, Public Safety, And Drivers With Cognitive Decline, Sharona Hoffman, Cassandra Burke Robertson

Faculty Publications

With a growing elderly population, cognitive decline in drivers has become a significant public safety concern. Currently, over thirty-two million individuals who are seventy or older have driver’s licenses, and that number is growing quickly. In addition, almost ten percent of U.S. seniors (those sixty-five and older) have dementia, and an additional twenty-two percent have mild cognitive impairment. Between a quarter and a half of individuals with mild to moderate dementia still drive. As cognitive abilities such as memory, attention, and decision-making skills deteriorate, a driver's ability to operate a vehicle safely can be compromised. This not only puts the …

Defining Health Affordability, Govind C. Persad

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Affordable health care, insurance, and prescription drugs are priorities for the public and for policymakers. Yet the lack of a consensus definition of health affordability is increasingly recognized as a roadblock to health reform efforts. This Article explains how and why American health law invokes health affordability and attempts, or fails, to define the concept. It then evaluates potential affordability definitions and proposes strategies for defining affordability more clearly and consistently in health law.

Part I examines the role health affordability plays in American health policy, in part by contrasting the United States’s health system with systems elsewhere. Part II …

Health Care Fraud And The Erosion Of Trust, Katrice Bridges Copeland

Northwestern University Law Review

In health care, trust is a foundational concept. Patients must trust that their medical practitioners are competent to treat them. The trustworthiness of medical practitioners encourages patients to disclose intimate facts about their medical issues. Further, patients must trust health care providers to demonstrate impartial concern for the patients’ well-being, also known as fidelity. In providing care, the needs of the patients, rather than financial incentives, must drive medical practitioners. Without this trust, patients may not cooperate with diagnosis and treatment. In addition to trusting providers, care outcomes are better if patients trust the health care system as a whole. …

Syringe Service Programs In Indiana: Moving Past The “Moral” Concerns Of Harm Reduction Towards Effective Legislation, Steven Nisi

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

The Shared Ethical Framework To Allocate Scarce Medical Resources: A Lesson From Covid-19, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Govind C. Persad

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to clarify the fair and equitable allocation of scarce medical resources, both within and among countries. The ethical allocation of such resources entails a three-step process: (1) elucidating the fundamental ethical values for allocation, (2) using these values to delineate priority tiers for scarce resources, and (3) implementing the prioritisation to faithfully realise the fundamental values. Myriad reports and assessments have elucidated five core substantive values for ethical allocation: maximising benefits and minimising harms, mitigating unfair disadvantage, equal moral concern, reciprocity, and instrumental value. These values are universal. None of the values are sufficient alone, …

Pro-Choice Plans, Brendan S. Maher

Faculty Scholarship

After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the United States Constitution may no longer protect abortion, but a surprising federal statute does. That statute is called the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), and it has long been one of the most powerful preemptive statutes in the entire United States Code. ERISA regulates “employee benefit plans,” which are the vehicle by which approximately 155 million people receive their health insurance. Plans are thus a major private payer for health benefits—and therefore abortions. While many post-Dobbs anti-abortion laws directly bar abortion by making either the receipt or provision of …

The Legacy Of Trust Promises: Native American Healthcare (Note), Hailey Trawick

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

From European colonialism to the establishment of the United States, the rights, history, and independence of Native Americans have been systematically stripped away. The American government expanded rapidly, forcibly displacing indigenous populations from their native lands and moving them to reservations with inferior resources and space. During a forced removal, often instituted by treaties between American Indian tribes and the federal government, government officials offered protection and access to resources in exchange for vast tribal land. Although treaty-making with American tribes ended over a century ago, their deleterious and often broken promises continue to haunt us.

Part I of this …

A Case For Brandeisian Federalism: The Erisa Preemption Clause And State Health Care Reform, Jordan May

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

The United States spends more for health care per capita than any other country in the world. Despite spending more, the United States has weaker health care outcomes than other similarly developed countries. This fact alone makes health care an important subject for policy reform. Given the current partisan gridlock in Congress, it is difficult to foresee any significant legislation in the area of health care reform at the federal level in the near future. As a result, Congress has allocated major health care reform efforts to the states. However, ERISA stands as a huge obstacle to state health care …

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Situating Dobbs, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

The recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health has been characterized as an outlier because its effect is to erase a previously recognized constitutional right. This paper situates Dobbs in a broader feminist constitutional history. It asks if this retrenchment is really such a unique turn in American jurisprudence when it comes to protections or “rights” that matter most to women’s lived experience. The paper argues that if one opens the aperture of constitutional history to embrace a more capacious view of rights, those afforded to women have often been eroded or erased by state legislatures, Congress, and courts. …

U.S. Law And Discrimination In Health Care, Kimani Paul-Emile

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Section 1115 Waivers: Innovation Through Experimentation, Or Stagnation Through Routine?, Nicole Johnson

Emory Law Journal

The Medicaid program operates as a federal-state partnership, in which the states agree to meet certain federally mandated requirements in exchange for federal matching funds for program expenditures. These federal matching funds can be anywhere from 50–90% of health care expenses incurred through state Medicaid programs. As such, states have a substantial interest in continuing this partnership and ensuring that their state plans comply with federal requirements. There is a way, though, in which states can gain more freedom in building their individual state plans. Through section 1115 waivers, states can ask the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) …

Why Money Is Well Spent On Time, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

There are a few reasons why incentivizing clinicians to spend more time with patients can improve health outcomes. Doing so affords clinicians time to assess social determinants’ influences on their patients’ health experiences; offers opportunities to identify and respond to patients’ loneliness; and helps motivate patients’ trust in health care, strengthen patient-clinician relationships, and bolster patients’ adherence to clinicians’ recommendations.

Worker Participation In A Time Of Covid: A Case Study Of Occupational Health And Safety Regulation In Ontario, Alan Hall, Eric Tucker

Articles & Book Chapters

This study examines worker voice in the development and implementation of safety plans or protocols for covid-19 prevention among hospital workers, long-term care workers, and education workers in the Canadian province of Ontario. Although Ontario occupational health and safety law and official public health policy appear to recognize the need for active consultation with workers and labour unions, there were limited – and in some cases no – efforts by employers to meaningfully involve workers, worker representatives (reps), or union officials in assessing covid-19 risks and planning protection and prevention measures. The political and legal efforts of workers and unions …

Healthcare Education Leaves The Hills: Frontier Nursing University's Move From Appalachia, Hannah Haksgaard

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Era Project Summary Of Argument Before Pa Supreme Court On Whether Medicaid Abortion Ban Amounts To Sex Discrimination, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

This morning, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Allegheny Reproductive Health Center v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, a case in which reproductive rights advocates have challenged the state’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortion (Coverage Ban), arguing that the ban violates the state constitution’s explicit prohibitions against sex discrimination.

Era Project Summary Of Argument Before Pa Supreme Court On Whether Medicaid Abortion Ban Amounts To Sex Discrimination, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

On October 26, 2022, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Allegheny Reproductive Health Center v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, a case in which reproductive rights advocates have challenged the state’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortion (Coverage Ban), arguing that the ban violates the state constitution’s explicit prohibitions against sex discrimination.

Statement From Columbia Law School’S Center For Gender And Sexuality Law On The Supreme Court Decision Overruling The Constitutional Right To Abortion, Center For Gender And Sexuality Law

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

The Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization signals a major break with at least three generations of constitutional law. This opinion eliminates not only constitutional protections for abortion, but well-settled legal principles on which fundamental rights have rested for over 60 years. “Within a 24-hour period the Supreme Court ruled on the one hand that abortion rights are a local issue to be decided by each state independently, while on the other, states are barred from making local decisions about how to regulate guns,” said Katherine Franke, James L. Dohr Professor of Law and Director of …

This Town Ain’T Big Enough For The Two Of Us: Should Contract Law Take A Backseat To Public Health?, Michael Stooksbury

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

No abstract provided.

Confidentiality, Warning And Aids: A Proposal To Protect Patients, Third Parties And Physicians

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Financing Rural Health Care, Isaac ("Zack") D. Buck

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

An Attempt To Bring Modern Workplace Realities To The Social Security Disability Adjudication System, Robert E. Rains

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

A Cure Of What Ails You: How Universal Healthcare Can Help Fix Our Tort System, David Pimentel

Articles

No abstract provided.

Aging, Health, Equity, And The Law: Foreword, Joan C. Foley

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Towards Racial Justice: The Role Of Medical-Legal Partnerships, Medha D. Makhlouf

Faculty Scholarly Works

Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) integrate knowledge and practices from law and health care in pursuit of health equity. However, the MLP movement has not reached its full potential to address racial health inequities, in part because its original framing was not explicitly race conscious. This article aims to stimulate discussion of the role of MLPs in racial justice. It calls for MLPs to name racism as a social determinant of health and to examine how racism may operate in the field. This work sets the stage for the next step: operationalizing racial justice in the MLP model, research, and practice.

Immigration Reforms As Health Policy, Medha D. Makhlouf, Patrick J. Glen

Faculty Scholarly Works

The 2020 election, uniting control of the political branches in the Democratic party, opened up a realistic possibility of immigration reform. Reform of the immigration system is long overdue, but in pursuing such reform, Congress should cast a broad net and recognize the health policies embedded in immigration laws. Some immigration laws undermine health policies designed to improve individual and population health. For example, immigration inadmissibility and deportability laws that chill noncitizens from enrolling in health-promoting public benefits contribute to health inequities in immigrant communities that spill over into the broader population—a fact highlighted by the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic. Restrictions …

One Child Town: The Health Care Exceptionalism Case Against Agglomeration Economies, Elizabeth Weeks

Utah Law Review

This Article offers an extended rebuttal to the suggestion to move residents away from dying communities to places with greater economic promise. Rural America, arguably, is one of those dying places. A host of strategies aim to shore up those communities and make them more economically viable. But one might ask, “Why bother?” In a similar vein, David Schleicher’s provocative 2017 Yale Law Journal article, Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation, recommended dismantling a host of state and local government laws that operate as barriers to migration by Americans from failing economies to robust agglomeration economies. But Schleicher …

Health Care Fraud Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry, Jacob T. Elberg

Washington Law Review

For decades, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued a steady flood of press releases announcing False Claims Act (FCA) settlements against health care entities and extolling the purportedly sharp message sent to the industry through these settlements about the consequences of engaging in wrongdoing. The FCA is the primary mechanism for government enforcement against health care entities engaged in wrongdoing, and it is expected to be DOJ’s key tool for addressing fraud arising out of government programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. DOJ has pointed to three key goals of its enforcement efforts (deterrence, incentivizing cooperation, and building …