Health Law and Policy Commons^™

“911: What’S Your Emergency?” Georgia’S Certificate Of Need Requirements Inhibit Rural Access To Quality Healthcare, Tessa Sizemore

Mercer Law Review

This Comment will describe the rise and fall of CON programs in America and will propose solutions to problems caused by Georgia’s current CON program. Part II will describe the history of healthcare regulation in America as it relates to CON programs. Part III will discusse Georgia’s adoption of a CON program and the State’s current CON statutory scheme. Part IV will summarize recent debate among Georgia legislators and will identify problems with Georgia’s CON program. Part V will compare Georgia’s CON program to those in other states. Part VI will then suggest steps that may provide some relief to …

Law's Body, Matt Saleh, Hannah Potter, Kendall Foley

Mercer Law Review

How do law’s narratives construct one of its central objects: the human body? This essay explores legal constructions of the human body: both in its idealized form, and in the negative ontological spaces of injury, disability, death, and dehumanization that surround that ideal.

Bodies are “the very ‘stuff’ of law.” There are few areas of law where the human body does not, somewhere, require definition. For instance, without a concept of the body, there can be no consequent constructions of personhood, nakedness, state intrusion, injury, disability, duty of care, aging, or the moment of death, to name only a few.

Healthcare Law, Kathryn Dunnam Harden

Mercer Law Review

This Article serves as a review of significant healthcare developments in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit during this past Survey period. Specifically, this Article will cover cases, legislation, and trends involving COVID-19, healthcare fraud, and reproductive rights.

Click It Or Ticket, But Don’T Admit It? How Unrestrained Drivers And Passengers Take Us For A Ride, E.R. Wright

Mercer Law Review

While the COVID-19 crisis has forced societies and governments to confront new challenges and answer new questions, it has also renewed and reignited longstanding debates about the extent of individuals’ obligations to each other. In particular, the American body politic is once again embroiled in conflict over the reach of an individual’s personal choices and the extent to which consideration of the potentially harmful effects of our choices on others should shape individual behaviors. Today, this fight centers on public health measures intended to reduce the spread and severity of COVID-19, such as masking, distancing, and vaccination. Debates rage over …

If The Mask Fits: The Unconstitutionality Of Face Masks In Criminal Trials During Covid-19, Nicole Morrison

Mercer Law Review

Society, and certainly the courts, did not have time to prepare and adapt to the unprecedented COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic before the effects of the pandemic swept through the nation. The first coronavirus case within the United States was reported on January 20, 2020. The coronavirus spread at an alarming rate, and by March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a pandemic. Just two days later, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, declared a National Emergency. By January 10, 2021, the United States faced 21,761,186 cumulative cases and 365,886 total deaths from the coronavirus.

In …

Under Kemp’S Eye: Analyzing The Constitutionality Of The Heartbeat Restriction In Georgia’S Life Act And Its Potential Impact On Abortion Law, Brittney A. Sizemore

Mercer Law Review

The current state of women’s right to bodily autonomy in the United States has eerily begun to resemble that of the dystopian society depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale. While abortion rates have steadily declined over the last decade, the attempts by state legislatures to restrict or completely take away women’s right to abortion have exponentially increased. In the first six months of 2019 alone, five states passed laws placing restrictions on abortion. These restrictions range from limiting the time frame in which a woman may obtain an abortion to when a fetal heartbeat has been detected—normally around six weeks—to a …

Healthcare Law, Kathryn S. Dunnam

Mercer Law Review

This Article serves as a review of significant healthcare developments in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit over the last two years and builds upon Mercer Law Review's last Healthcare Article in Volume 65. Specifically, this Article will cover cases dealing with physician speech, the False Claims Act, and the Medicare Secondary Payer Act.

Small-Business Health Insurance: A Symptom Of The Diseased American Health Care System ... What Is The Cure?, M. Catherine Norman

Mercer Law Review

Small businesses are independent establishments wholly owned by an individual, a family, or business partners. Small businesses are vital to local and national economies. In the aggregate, they have a very large impact on the nation, but individually, they are truly small. As such, the influence of small businesses could easily be overlooked, especially when health insurance legislation's focus is on individuals and large businesses.

The current American health insurance system is not sustainable because it increases the burden on large employers while providing a potentially untenable situation for small employers, does nothing to control rising medical costs, and does …

Georgia's Telemedicine Laws And Regulations: Protecting Against Health Care Access, Adelyn B. Boleman

Mercer Law Review

Georgia currently ranks 44th in the nation in terms of patient access to physicians. Roughly 52% of Georgia's physicians are located in five areas that serve just 38% of the state's population. However, technological advancements present opportunities to bridge the gap between physicians willing to treat patients through non-traditional means and patients simply wanting access to physicians. Telemedicine, sometimes referred to as telehealth, is generally known as the use of audio, video, and other types of data communication to exchange medical information from one site to another to connect healthcare professionals with patients. While telemedicine can extend patient access to …

An Advance Directive: The Elective, Effective Way To Be Protective Of Your Rights, Krysta Rae Tate

Mercer Law Review

Death is an eternal theme within all cultures; the Grim Reaper coming to collect a person's soul, death riding in on a pale horse, mythical characters like Hades and Thanatos. A seemingly inescapable proposition emerged over time: the nature of death is unpredictable and unavoidable. Eventually, due to changes in technology, the world's perspective on the nature of death shifted. Advancements in medical technology introduced a plethora of life-sustaining procedures, and death was no longer completely beyond a human's control.

A breakthrough in the medical means used to control the dynamic nature of death occurred when the Georgia General Assembly …

Where Healthcare And Policing Converge: How Georgia Law Promotes Evasion Of Financial Responsibility For Indigent Arrestees' And Municipal Inmates' Medical Care, L. Taylor Hamrick

Mercer Law Review

When a law enforcement officer arrests an injured or visibly sick person, the officer typically transports the arrestee directly to a hospital for treatment prior to formal booking in a jail or detention facility. Indeed, convicted inmates, pretrial detainees, and arrestees have a constitutional right to receive necessary medical care while in police custody. However, the United States Supreme Court has distinguished a government's constitutional obligation to provide necessary medical care from a duty to pay for such care.' Instead, the Supreme Court has held that a governmental entity must pay for medical treatment of a person in its custody …

Contraceptive Coverage Falls, No More: Using Rfra To Limit The Scope Of Religious Challenges To The Aca's Contraceptive Mandate, M. Catherine Norman

Mercer Law Review

Contraceptive coverage is a required part of all new insurance plans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), but many employers' are exempt from this requirement. Other employers have challenged the contraceptive requirement on religious grounds. In East Texas Baptist University v. Burwell, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held as follows: (1) the plaintiffs are either automatically exempt from the contraceptive-coverage mandate or eligible for accommodation upon application; (2) the challenged provisions do not violate rights to religious freedom under the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA); (3) RFRA applies only to …

Healthcare, Terri K. Benton

Mercer Law Review

This Article offers a review of recent healthcare law developments in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The cases discussed below span topics from disclosure of protected health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), arbitration agreements and their interplay in wrongful death suits, and the reduction of medical care provided through the Georgia Pediatric Program (GAPP).

United States V. Diaz: The Gap Between Medication And Restoration, Bryson Mccollum

Mercer Law Review

In United States v. Diaz, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in a case of first impression, determined whether the state met its burden in applying the United States Supreme Court's test articulated in Sell v. United States, to involuntarily medicate an incompetent, schizophrenic defendant. Based on the Sell test that was established in 2003, the court of appeals had to determine which evidentiary findings were sufficient to meet the clear and convincing evidence standard allowing the State of Georgia to forcibly medicate the appellant, Michael Diaz. The court of appeals found no clear …

Roe V. Wade Inverted: How The Supreme Court Might Have Privileged Fetal Rights Over Reproductive Freedoms, Jack Wade Nowlin

Mercer Law Review

In Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court privileged reproductive freedoms over fetal rights, but what if the Court had done the reverse in resolving the question of abortion under the Constitution- elevating fetal rights over reproductive freedoms? How might the Supreme Court have justified such a holding? What arguments, doctrines, and cases would the Court have invoked? What might concurring and dissenting opinions have said in response? A full analysis of these questions requires an exploration of a range of issues: the basis of constitutional personhood, the suspect nature of birth-status classifications, the fundamentality of access to …

Defense Of The Constitutionality Of Health Care Reform, Gillian Metzger

Mercer Law Review

Along with the others, I want to thank David for organizing this panel. The great advantage of going last is that the terms of the debate over the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality have been established by the other panelists. As a result, I am going to target my remarks on a few key points, rather than walk through a full dress review of some of the arguments. Like the others, my focus is on existing doctrine. I completely agree with Dean Chemerinsky in thinking that the Supreme Court is not going to change the key parameters of existing analysis, but …

Introduction Of Speakers At The Aals Hot Topic Panel Discussion On January 7, 2011, Brad Joondeph

Mercer Law Review

There are currently about twenty cases being litigated in the lower federal courts that challenge-in some way, shape, or form-the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, also affectionately known as the ACA or "Obamacare." Thus far, three district courts have dispositively ruled on the merits of the constitutional challenges: one from the Western District of Virginia, one from the Eastern District of Virginia, and one from the Eastern District of Michigan. So we now have three cases that are essentially in the courts of appeals. …

Turning Citizens Into Subjects: Why The Health Insurance Mandate Is Unconstitutional, Randy E. Barnett

Mercer Law Review

In 2010 something happened in this country that has never happened before: Congress required that every person enter into a contractual relationship with a private company. I realize that writers make lots of factual claims that readers are wise to be skeptical about. I can prove, however, that an economic mandate like this one is unprecedented. If this mandate had ever happened before, everyone reading this passage would know all the contracts the federal government requires them to make, upon pain of a penalty enforced by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). No reader, however, can recite any such mandate and …

Crossing The Constitutional Line In Spending From Persuasion To Compulsion: A Reply To Gillian Metzger, David G. Oedel

Mercer Law Review

In her remarks at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), Professor Gillian Metzger of Columbia University Law School offered an interesting critique of the Spending Clause claim now being pursued by a majority of the states in the United States in the constitutional challenge to health care reform. The states claim that the changes to Medicaid are beyond the power of Congress to effect constitutionally under the Spending Clause of the United States Constitution because the changes are coercive and also violate the "general restrictions" identified by the Supreme Court of the United States …

A Defense Of The Constitutionality Of The Individual Mandate, Erwin Chemerinsky

Mercer Law Review

Under current constitutional law, I do not think this is a close question. It is quite clear that this law is constitutional because it exercises Congress's power. Lest this be taken as the observation of a liberal law professor, Charles Fried-whom no one would call a liberal law professor, former Solicitor General in the Bush Administration-said on Fox television that he had recently been to Australia and purchased a kangaroo hat, and he would eat that hat if the Supreme Court were to declare this law unconstitutional. While I do not find a hat made out of kangaroo skins to …

Health Care Reform, The Spending Clause, And Dole's Restrictions, David G. Oedel

Mercer Law Review

I am here to discuss a constitutional problem with the Health Care Reform Act" that so far has gotten little attention and that has not yet been discussed by our other panelists. The question is whether the federal government's expansion of Medicaid is a coercive exercise of federal power in violation of the Spending Clause of the United States Constitution." This is one of the two main arguments being pressed by the twenty states87 in the Florida litigation challenging the constitutionality of health care reform." It is an argument that I think you're likely to hear more of in the …

Aals Hot Topic Panel Question & Answer Session

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keeping The Government Away From Medicaid Recipients' Pocketbook: Protecting Medicaid Recipients' Rights To Proceeds Of Third-Party Settlements In Arkansas Department Of Health & Human Services V. Ahlborn, Sean Sandison

Mercer Law Review

In Arkansas Department of Health & Human Services v. Ahlborn, the United States Supreme Court approached the contentious issue of whether Medicaid and state Medicaid agencies can recover expenses incurred on behalf of a Medicaid recipient from the entirety of the recipient's third-party settlement. Over the past decade, several states and the United States Department of Health and Human Services have reached opposite results on this question. In its unanimous opinion, the Court quelled the debate by limiting Medicaid and the corresponding state programs' recoveries from third-party settlements to the proceeds representing repayment of medical expenses, a move likely …

Bragdon V. Abbott: Is Asymptomatic Hiv A Per Se Disability Under The Americans With Disabilities Act?, Amy C. Reeder

Mercer Law Review

In Bragdon v. Abbott, the United States Supreme Court held that asymptomatic HIV is a "disability" under the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") because it is a physical impairment that substantially limits the major life activity of reproduction. It further held that determining whether a plaintiff is entitled to relief requires objective and particularized evidence of the risks to the defendant under the "direct threat" provisions of the ADA. This Casenote focuses exclusively on the "disability" holding.

The Managed Care Dilemma: Can Theories Of Tort Liability Adapt To The Realities Of Cost Containment?, Barbara A. Noah

Mercer Law Review

During the past decade, the United States health care system has undergone a transformation from a market comprised mainly of self-employed physicians in solo or small group practices to one in which far fewer physicians engage in this type of independent practice. More than three quarters of the physicians in this country now practice medicine within some form of managed care organization ("MCO") or see some managed care patients. "Managed care" is a term used to describe a variety of organizations that control costs and utilization of health care services through techniques such as using physicians as "gatekeepers" for hospitalization …

Compassion In Dying V. Washington: A Resolution To The "Jurisprudence Of Doubt" Enshrouding Physician-Assisted Suicide?, Stephen J. Tyde Jr.

Mercer Law Review

By affirming a district court decision holding Washington's criminal prohibition of assisted suicide unconstitutional, an en banc Ninth Circuit in Compassion in Dying v. Washington reversed a three judge panel decision and proffered the most reasoned and carefully drafted opinion yet in the battle surrounding terminally ill patients and their quest to legally pursue physician-assisted suicide. Three terminally ill patients, five physicians who treat terminally ill patients, and Compassion in Dying, an organization that provides counseling and assistance to mentally competent, terminally ill adults considering suicide, challenged the statute under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth …

Rural Health Care And State Antitrust Reform, Michael S. Jacobs

Mercer Law Review

Now more than a hundred years old, the federal antitrust laws seek generally to promote and preserve business competition. Over the past twenty years, courts and regulatory agencies have applied this broad goal in a narrow economic sense, defining "competition" not as rivalry, for example, but as those forms of business activity most conducive to "consumer welfare." Consumer welfare, in this sense, is thought to be maximized when markets produce the greatest output of goods or services at the lowest prices with the widest range of consumer choice. For purposes of analysis, antitrust courts view all markets and market participants …

In The Matter Of Baby K: The Fourth Circuit Stretches Emtaia Even Further, Kevin T. Brown

Mercer Law Review

In 1994, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed its position on the applicability of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 (EMTALA) when it decided In re Baby "K". Baby K, an anencephalic infant, was born in the hospital in October 1992. Anencephaly is a congenital malformation found in a very small number of infants in which a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp are missing. One of the missing components of the brain is the cerebrum, which provides cognitive abilities and awareness and allows interaction with our surroundings. Baby K, therefore, lacked …

Introduction - Rural Healthcare: The Challenges Of A Changing Environment, J. Paul Newell

Mercer Law Review

I am delighted to be a part of these proceedings. Just to establish my biases, perhaps more than my credentials, you need to understand that I come to this task from three historical and shaping perspectives. The first is that of Family Medicine. I spent twenty-three years of my career in academic Family Medicine and continue to view that particular primary care discipline as the one best suited for providing patient access into the medical system, because of the broad base of training and education it provides for its graduates in the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to take care …

Privatization Of Rural Public Hospitals: Implications For Access And Indigent Care, Phyllis E. Bernard

Mercer Law Review

Public hospitals have long functioned as the primary source of acute care services in rural communities. Yet, just as the farm crisis and population shifts of the 1980s eroded the economic base of rural America, these same factors-coupled with changes in health care financing-have eroded the stability of rural hospitals. Many have closed or converted to subacute services. Other hospitals, facing the threat of future insolvency, inability to upgrade technology, loss of patient revenue base, or legal obstacles in forming cooperative networks with other providers, have opted to surrender their cumbersome governmental status to become leaner, private players in the …