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Full-Text Articles in Insurance Law
Foreword, Jennifer Taub
Foreword, Jennifer Taub
Faculty Scholarship
This Foreword highlights the central points of the Articles in Volume 43, Issue 1 of Western New England Law Review. The Article topics include emotional support animals, distribution rights for small beer brewers, fairness in accident insurance coverage, alternative legal education materials, and custody challenges for parents with abusive partners. Each share the identification of a perceived problem with the legal status quo and presents proposed solutions.
After Tackett: Incomplete Contracts For Post-Employment Healthcare, Maria O'Brien
After Tackett: Incomplete Contracts For Post-Employment Healthcare, Maria O'Brien
Faculty Scholarship
This paper examines the recent U.S. Supreme Court retiree health care decision in Tackett v. M & G Polymers and focuses, in particular, on the ostensibly odd silence with respect to a critical contract term — whether the parties in fact agreed that these benefits were vested. Although the union in Tackett insisted these welfare benefits were clearly intended to vest and the employer now asserts they can be modified at any time, the collective bargaining agreement and supporting documents are ambiguous on this question. This paper examines how and why this “silence” persisted for so many decades and concludes …
Overbilling And Informed Financial Consent — A Contractual Solution, Barak D. Richman, Mark A. Hall, Kevin A. Schulman
Overbilling And Informed Financial Consent — A Contractual Solution, Barak D. Richman, Mark A. Hall, Kevin A. Schulman
Faculty Scholarship
U.S. hospitals and physicians regularly charge uninsured patients and patients receiving care outside their health-plan networks far more what most health insurers pay and far more than their actual costs. Such practices have triggered over 100 lawsuits and prompted calls for pricing transparency in Congress and price regulation in several states. This Perspective argues that the theory of implied contracts, a foundation in most first-year courses in contract law, offers a useful legal and ethical mechanism for handling these troubling problems in health care billing.