Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Health Care Referrals Out Of The Shadows: Recognizing The Looming Threat Of The Texas Patient Solicitation Act And Other Illegal Remuneration Statutes, Trenton Brown

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

Legalizing Assisted Dying: Cross Purposes And Unintended Consequences, Emily Jackson

Dalhousie Law Journal

In the UK, assisted dying continues to be unlawful, and pro-legalization campaigners have made use of human rights based applications for judicial review and Private Members Bills in order to try to change the law. Interestingly, however, the proposed statute would not offer an assisted death to many of the litigants who have sought to force Parliament's hand. This article considers whether this a one-off peculiarity, or whether there might be other mismatches between what the law can achieve and what matters most to people who are seeking an assisted death for themselves. It also explores what seems to be …

Parallel Worlds: Comparing Rural Development To Development In Global Communities, Jena Martin, Karon Powell

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Physicians' Attitudes, Concerns, And Procedural Understanding Of Medical Aid-In-Dying In Vermont, Teresa Ditommaso, Ari P. Kirshenbaum, Brendan Parent

Dalhousie Law Journal

The general purpose of the current study was to collect data on physicians' attitudes towards Act 39, the medical aid-in-dying act that was legislatively approved in 2013. Given the recent nature of the implementation of Act 39, this is the first such study to be conducted in the State of Vermont. The survey was quantitative in nature and addressed three distinct aspects of legalized prescribing of life-ending medication, these being physicians': (I) attitudes regarding ethics and legality of Act 39, (11)understandings of the policies and procedural requirements under the law, including their belief in legal immunity from penalty, and (I1) …

Intellectual Property And Public Health – A White Paper, Ryan G. Vacca, Jim Chen, Jay Dratler Jr., Tom Folsom, Timothy Hall, Yaniv Heled, Frank Pasquale, Elizabeth Reilly, Jeff Samuels, Kathy Strandburg, Kara Swanson, Andrew Torrance, Katharine Van Tassel

Katharine Van Tassel

On October 26, 2012, the University of Akron School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property and Technology hosted its Sixth Annual IP Scholars Forum. In attendance were thirteen legal scholars with expertise and an interest in IP and public health who met to discuss problems and potential solutions at the intersection of these fields. This report summarizes this discussion by describing the problems raised, areas of agreement and disagreement between the participants, suggestions and solutions made by participants and the subsequent evaluations of these suggestions and solutions.

Led by the moderator, participants at the Forum focused generally on three broad …

Too Clever By Half: Commanding The Nonuse Of State Authority To Regulate Health Benefits In The Aca, Michael F. Ryan

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Prior to the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), state legislatures routinely passed laws requiring health insurance carriers to cover certain health care services or providers. At the behest of the insurance industry, Congress attempted to use the health reform law as a vehicle to reign in state-specific “mandated benefit” laws. That being said, the ACA does not prevent states from enacting mandated benefit laws; in fact, the statute expressly permits states to enact such laws. Instead, Congress created a significant barrier to continued state-specific regulation of health insurance benefits. Specifically, 42 U.S.C. § 18031(d)(3)(B)(ii) (Section …

Zika, Pregnancy, And The Law, Sam F. Halabi

Arkansas Law Review

The public health emergency surrounding the spread of the Zika virus has resurrected and brought into sharp relief some of the most vexing questions surrounding the relationship between pregnancy and law: the appropriate circumstances, if any, in which fetal tissue research is permissible; when and how the government may sponsor statements intended to influence reproductive decisions; and how to balance the health and rights of both women and their unborn children when health threats target both.

Health Justice In The Age Of Alternative Facts And Tax Cuts: Value-Based Care, Medicaid Reform, And The Social Determinants Of Health, Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Some provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) as well as regulatory policies under the Obama administration reflected the overwhelming evidence that to reduce health care costs, and to improve quality of care and population health, the social determinants of health (SDOH) must be addressed. These policies included funding for partnerships between public health agencies, community organizations, and health care institutions, promotion of value-based payment models that incentivize integrated health and social care delivery, and support for Medicaid program innovations that directly address social needs as part of health care. The Trump administration, through a …

Political Rhetoric And Minority Health: Introducing The Rhetoric-Policy-Health Paradigm, Kimberly Cogdell Grainger

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Rhetoric is a persuasive device that has been studied for centuries by philosophers, thinkers, and teachers. In the political sphere of the Trump era, the bombastic, social media driven dissemination of rhetoric creates the perfect space to increase its effect. Today, there are clear examples of how rhetoric influences policy. This Article explores the link between divisive political rhetoric and policies that negatively affect minority health in the U.S. The rhetoric-policy-health (RPH) paradigm illustrates the connection between rhetoric and health. Existing public health policy research related to Health in All Policies and the social determinants of health combined with rhetorical …

What Hope For Health In All Policies’ Addition And Multiplication Of Equity In An Age Of Subtraction And Division At The Federal Level?: The Memphis Experience, Amy T. Campbell

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Increasingly, people recognize that social factors, such as poverty, the living environment, and educational status, substantially affect health outcomes. A “health in all policies approach” (HiAP) seeks structural reform of policymaking to require purposeful consideration, across an interconnected range of public sector actors, of the health equity and justice policy-level considerations of these factors. With the election of Donald J. Trump as 45th President in the United States, however, the U.S. entered a world where the math of the day is division and subtraction, rather than addition or multiplication. And yet, hope in HiAP remains through examples of innovative approaches …

Medicaid For All?: State-Level Single-Payer Health Care, Lindsay Wiley

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

If single-payer health care is ever to become a reality in the United States, it will very likely be pioneered by a state government, much like Canada’s single-payer system was first adopted in the provinces. Canada’s system operates more like U.S. Medicaid — financed nationally but administered largely by the provinces — than U.S. Medicare. This article describes three basic strategies progressive U.S. state governments are exploring for achieving universal access to high-quality health care and better health outcomes for their residents. First, maximizing eligibility for the existing Medicaid program using matching federal funds. Second, taking up the mantle of …

Take Time To Wander Outside Your Comfort Zone, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Dignity In Choice: A Terminally Ill Patient's Right To Choose, Cody Bauer

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ip Preparedness For Outbreak Diseases, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

Outbreaks of infectious diseases will worsen, as illustrated by the recent back-to-back Ebola and Zika epidemics. The development of innovative drugs, especially in the form of vaccines, is key to minimizing future outbreaks, yet current intellectual property (IP) regimes are ineffective in supporting this goal.

IP scholarship has not adequately addressed the role of IP in the development of vaccines for outbreak diseases. This Article fills that void. Through case studies on the recent Ebola and Zika outbreaks, it provides the first descriptive analysis of the role of IP from the pre- to the post-outbreak stages, specifically identifying IP inefficiencies. …

Healthcare Blockchain Infrastructure: A Comparative Approach, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

Blockchain has been hailed as the most disruptive technology of the next decade. One of the areas of immediate application is healthcare, where different types of blockchain applications could help streamline data sharing, protect patient privacy, and assist in the monitoring of drug shipments. This Article explores the first steps taken by healthcare companies in the United States to incorporate blockchain solutions into their business models. It then contrasts them to ongoing experiments in the European Union, with a focus on Sweden’s adoption of CareChain (a national, interoperable blockchain health data platform) and Estonia’s digitization of 95% of the country’s …

A Perspective On Incentives For Novel Inpatient Antibiotics: No One-Size-Fits-All, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

The need for new “pull” incentives to stimulate antibiotic R&D is widely recognized. Due to the global diversity of health systems, combined with different challenges faced by antibiotics used in different types of healthcare settings, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, different “pull” incentives should be tailored to local contexts, priorities, and antibiotic types. Policymakers and industry should collaborate to identify appropriate solutions at the local, regional, and global levels.

Women Of Color And Health: Issues And Solutions, June Cross, Nia Weeks, Kristen Underhill, Chloe Bootstaylor

Faculty Scholarship

Chloe Bootstaylor: Welcome to our second panel. This panel focuses on women of color in health, issues, and solutions. The session is inspired by Professor June Cross of the Columbia School of Journalism and her recent film, Wilhemina’s War, which follows the story of Wilhemina Dixon and depicts the obstacles that Americans with HIV/AIDS face in accessing not only adequate healthcare but also financial, infrastructural, and social support in their communities.

This panel will consist of Professor Underhill and Nia Weeks. June Cross will join us a little later on. We will start with a clip from her film, …