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Full-Text Articles in Disability Law
Who Gets The Ventilator? Disability Discrimination In Covid-19 Medical-Rationing Protocols, Samuel Bagenstos
Who Gets The Ventilator? Disability Discrimination In Covid-19 Medical-Rationing Protocols, Samuel Bagenstos
Articles
The coronavirus pandemic has forced us to reckon with the possibility of having to ration life-saving medical treatments. In response, many health systems have employed protocols that explicitly de-prioritize people for these treatments based on pre-existing disabilities. This Essay argues that such protocols violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Affordable Care Act. Such explicit discrimination on its face violates these statutes. Nor can medical providers simply define disabled patients as being “unqualified” because of disabilities that do not affect the ability to ameliorate the condition for which treatment is sought. A proper interpretation of the …
Infected Judgment: Legal Responses To Physician Bias, Mary Crossley
Infected Judgment: Legal Responses To Physician Bias, Mary Crossley
Articles
Substantial evidence indicates that clinically irrelevant patient characteristics, including race and gender, may at times influence a physician's choice of treatment. Less clear, however, is whether a patient who is the victim of a biased medical decision has any effective legal recourse. Heedful of the difficulties of designing research to establish conclusively the role of physician bias, this article surveys published evidence suggesting the operation of physician bias in clinical decision making. The article then examines potential legal responses to biased medical judgments. A patient who is the subject of a biased decision may sue her doctor for violating his …