Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Who's Zoomin' Who?: Comments On Liability For Pharmaceutical Products In Canada, Allan C. Hutchinson, Sue Hodgson

Allan C. Hutchinson

A collection of papers from the ninth Fulbright Colloquium held in September 1989. The papers compare legal practices and procedures in North America and Europe and the barriers to drug development caused by increased litigation in cases involving pharmaceutical products.

Fallout From Chaoulli: Is It Time To Find Cover?, Joan M. Gilmour

Joan M. Gilmour

This article examines the implications of the decision in Chaoulli v. Quebec (A.G.) for Canadian health policy. The author assesses whether governments are likely to strengthen medicare, given past performance and the exit option Chaoulli presents. The article analyzes the consequences of increasing private care and private insurance, concluding this will diminish the publicly funded system. It contrasts Chaoulli -with courts' dismissals of claims for Charter protection of minimal social and economic security, despite the profound effects of the latter on health status. It concludes by noting Chaoulli is one more example of the increasing prevalence of discourse normalizing privatization …

On The Importance Of Intellectual Property Rights For E-Science And The Integrated Health Record, Giuseppina D'Agostino, Chris Hinds, Marina Jirotka, Charles Meyer

Giuseppina D'Agostino

An integrated health record (IHR) that enables clinical data to be shared at a national level has profound implications for medical research. Data that have been useful primarily within a single clinic will instead be free to move rapidly around a national network infrastructure. This raises challenges for technologists, clinical practice, and for the governance of these data. This article considers one specific issue that is currently poorly understood: how intellectual property (IP) relates to the sharing of medical data for research on large-scale electronic networks. Based on an understanding of current practices, this article presents recommendations for the governance …

Newsletter Fall 2015

Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2015

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Medicine Shoppe V. Loretta Lynch: Pharmacists’ Corresponding Responsibility With Physicians Under Dea Interpretation Of The “Legitimate Medical Purpose” Standard, Jeffrey C. Grass Jd, Ms, Aclm

Jeffrey C. Grass JD, MS, ACLM

The Medicine Shoppe v. Loretta Lynch et al. 14-1223 will assist pharmacists and pharmacy owners in understanding their duties “corresponding responsibility to assure that its prescriptions for controlled substances are issued for a legitimate medical purpose” and “in the practitioner's usual course of professional practice.” In the meantime, pharmacists need to know that they are not immune from administrative, regulatory or criminal prosecution under the CSA solely due to their status. Rather, they are expected to dispense drugs for the bona fide treatment of a patient's disease. Under this regime, he or she must exercise sound professional judgment when evaluating …

Guidelines For Physician-Assisted Suicide, Raphael Cohen-Almagor

raphael cohen-almagor

This paper proposes a set of guidelines for physician-assisted suicide (PAS). This set of guidelines integrates pertinent guidelines that were adopted in Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide is legal, in the Netherlands and Belgium where euthanasia is legal, in Switzerland where assisted suicide is practiced, and in the Northern Territory of Australia, where physician-assisted suicide was legal for a short period of time.

Law & Healthcare Newsletter, Vol. 23, No. 1, Fall 2015

Law & Health Care Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Process, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Indiana Law Journal

This Article suggests that people tend to undervalue their procedural rights—their proverbial “day in court”—until they are actually involved in a dispute. The Article argues that the inherent, outcome-independent value of participating in a dispute resolution process comes largely from its power to soothe a person’s grievance— their perception of unfairness and accompanying negative emotional reaction—win or lose. But a tendency to assume unchanging emotional states, known in behavioral economics as projection bias, can prevent people from anticipating that they might become aggrieved and from appreciating the grievance-soothing power of process. When this happens, people will waive their procedural rights …

Three Words And The Future Of The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

As an essential part of its effort to achieve near universal coverage, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) extends sizable tax credits to most people who buy insurance on the newly established health care exchanges. Yet several lawsuits have been filed challenging the availability of those tax credits in the thirty-four states that refused to set up their own exchanges. The lawsuits are premised on a strained interpretation of the ACA that, if accepted, would make a hash of other provisions of the statute and undermine its effort to extend coverage to the uninsured. The courts should reject this latest effort …

Medicine As A Public Calling, Nicholas Bagley

Michigan Law Review

The debate over how to tame private medical spending tends to pit advocates of government-provided insurance—a single-payer scheme—against those who would prefer to harness market forces to hold down costs. When it is mentioned at all, the possibility of regulating the medical industry as a public utility is brusquely dismissed as anathema to the American regulatory tradition. This dismissiveness, however, rests on a failure to appreciate just how deeply the public utility model shaped health law in the twentieth century— and how it continues to shape health law today. Closer economic regulation of the medical industry may or may not …

When Biopharma Meets Software: Bioinformatics At The Patent Office, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have spilled much ink questioning patent quality. Complaints encompass concern about incoming applications, examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”), and the USPTO’s ultimate output. The literature and some empirical data also suggest, however, that applications, examination, and output may differ considerably based on technology. Most notably, although definitions of patent quality are contested, quality in the biopharmaceutical industry is often considered substantially higher than that in information and communications technology (ICT) industries.

This Article presents the first empirical examination of what happens when the two fields are combined. Specifically, it analyzes the creation and early history …

Procedural Triage, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Faculty Scholarly Works

Prior scholarship has assumed that the inherent value of a “day in court” is the same for all claimants, so that when procedural resources (like a jury trial or a hearing) are scarce, they should be rationed the same way for all claimants. That is incorrect. This Article shows that the inherent value of a “day in court” can be far greater for some claimants, such as first-time filers, than for others, such as corporate entities and that it can be both desirable and feasible to take this variation into account in doling out scarce procedural protections. In other words, …

Mandatory Process, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Faculty Scholarly Works

This Article suggests that people tend to undervalue their procedural rights—their proverbial “day in court”—until they are actually involved in a dispute. The Article argues that the inherent, outcome-independent value of participating in a dispute resolution process comes largely from its power to soothe a person’s grievance— their perception of unfairness and accompanying negative emotional reaction—win or lose. But a tendency to assume unchanging emotional states, known in behavioral economics as projection bias, can prevent people from anticipating that they might become aggrieved and from appreciating the grievance-soothing power of process. When this happens, people will waive their procedural rights …

Imagining Global Health With Justice: In Defense Of The Right To Health, Eric A. Friedman, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The singular message in Global Health Law is that we must strive to achieve global health with justice—improved population health, with a fairer distribution of benefits of good health. Global health entails ensuring the conditions of good health—public health, universal health coverage, and the social determinants of health—while justice requires closing today’s vast domestic and global health inequities. These conditions for good health should be incorporated into public policy, supplemented by specific actions to overcome barriers to equity.

A new global health treaty grounded in the right to health and aimed at health equity—a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH)—stands …

Funding The Costs Of Disease Outbreaks Caused By Non Vaccination, Robert L. Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

While vaccination rates in the United States are high – generally over 90 percent – rates of exemptions have been going up, and preventable diseases coming back. 2014 is shaping to be one of the worst years for measles since 1994, with outbreaks generally starting from unvaccinated individuals and affecting primarily the unvaccinated. While pertussis is a more complex story, communities with high rates of exemptions are more vulnerable to outbreaks. Aside from their human cost and the financial cost of treatment imposed on those who become ill, outbreaks impose financial costs on an already burdened public health system, diverting …

Dignifying Madness: Rethinking Commitment Law In An Age Of Mass Incarceration, Jonathan Simon, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

University of Miami Law Review

Modern nation-states have been trapped in recurring cycles of incarcerating and emancipating residents with psychiatric disabilities. New cycles of enthusiasm for incarceration generally commence with well-defined claims about the evils of allowing “the mad” to remain at liberty and the benefits incarceration would bring to the afflicted. A generation or two later, at most, reports of terrible conditions in institutions circulate and new laws follow, setting high burdens for those seeking to imprison and demanding exacting legal procedures with an emphasis on individual civil liberties. Today, we seem to be arriving at another turn in the familiar cycle. A growing …

Trafficked? Aids, Criminal Law And The Politics Of Measurement, Aziza Ahmed

University of Miami Law Review

Since early in the HIV epidemic, epidemiologists identified individuals who transact sex as a high-risk group for contracting HIV. Where the issue of transacting sex has been framed as sex work, harm-reduction advocates and scholars call for decriminalization as a primary legal solution to address HIV. Where the issue is defined as trafficking, advocates known as abolitionists argue instead for the criminalization of the purchase of sex.

Global health governance institutions are porous to these competing ideas and ideologies. This article first historicizes the contestation between harm-reduction and abolition in global governance on health. The paper then turns to a …

The Aca: Where Did It Come From And Where Is It Going?, Mary Ann Chirba

Mary Ann Chirba

No abstract provided.

Compensating Extra Costs For Persons With Disabilities Through Economic Equality: The U.S. And Swedish Legal Approach In A Human Rights Perspective, James Gilson, Richard Sahlin

James A Gilson

Disabled persons can incur costs that are directly related to their disabilities, and which are often not publicly sponsored through health care insurance, such as Medicare and Medicaid in the U.S. or through targeted support and services administered through the Swedish central government, county councils and municipalities. For purposes of this article such un-covered and un-reimbursed expenses are referred to as “extra costs.” For example, a visually impaired person may pay extra costs for his or her guide dog such as dog food and veterinary care. A person with rheumatism may pay an extra cost for an alternative treatment such …