Health Law and Policy Commons^™

The 2014 Farm Bill: Farm Subsidies And Food Oppression, Andrea Freeman

Seattle University Law Review

The 2014 Farm Bill ushered in some significant and surprising changes. One of these was that it rendered the identity of all the recipients of farm subsidies secret. Representative Larry Combest, who is now a lobbyist for agribusiness, first introduced a secrecy provision into the bill in 2000. The provision, however, only applied to subsidies made in the form of crop insurance. Until 2014, the majority of subsidies were direct payments and the identity of the people who received them was public information. In fact, the Environmental Working Group’s release of the list of recipients led to a series of …

The Challenge And Dilemma Of Charting A Course To Constitutionally Protect The Severely Mentally Ill Capital Defendant From The Death Penalty, Lyn Entzeroth

Akron Law Review

This article examines these issues in the context of an important and emerging constitutional challenge to the death penalty: whether the death penalty can be imposed on capital defendants who suffer from severe mental illness at the time of the commission of their crimes. The American Bar Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill all endorse a death penalty exemption for the severely mentally ill. Recent law review articles suggest that such an exemption may even be compelled by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roper v. Simmons and Atkins v. …

Is Meaningful Peer Review Headed Back To Florida?, Brendan A. Sorg

Akron Law Review

This comment lays the foundation to evaluate the sustainability of Amendment 7 post-PSQIA in Part II by first examining medical peer review, its origin, its evolution and why peer review remains important to patient safety. Although many physicians dislike peer review, Congress has acknowledged its importance by making peer review mandatory and by providing the statutory protections to ensure peer review remains meaningful.7 States have followed suit, passing their own laws that provide for the protection of peer review materials. Part II also addresses how Amendment 7 reversed Florida’s historical approach providing broad peer review protection and how this erosion …

Kidney Transplantation: Only For The Well-To-Do?, Jennifer M. Smith

Jennifer McMahon

No abstract provided.

Closing The Door To Lost Earnings Under The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act Of 1986, Aaron M. Levin

Aaron M Levin

After a wave of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers hindered the profitability and production of life-saving vaccines, Congress enacted The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The Act offers an incentive for individuals to get vaccinated in order to mitigate the population’s exposure to disease, while encouraging the continued production of these serums by pharmaceutical companies. Although imperfect, the Vaccine Act fosters promise in filtering out frivolous claims and provides a central route for due process to the individuals who suffer from a vaccine-related injury. By removing a potential state tort issue to the Federal Circuit, Congress created a reasonably …

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome: A Global Health Challenge, Lawrence O. Gostin, Daniel Lucey

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Beginning in May 2015, Middle-East respiratory syndrome (MERS) experienced its first publicly reported “super-spreading” event in South Korea. By mid-June, more than 120 cases and 11 deaths in South Korea had been linked to a businessman returning from travel to Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Globally more than 1200 had been infected of whom more than 450 died—a high fatality rate of 37%.

What are the most effective legal, social, and public health responses to MERS and other emerging diseases? First, the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) did not effectively guide the …

The Strange Politics Of Medicaid Expansion, 47 J. Marshall L. Rev. 947 (2014), Steven Schwinn

Steven D. Schwinn

This paper first outlines the Medicaid program, Medicaid expansion in the PPACA, and the Court’s ruling on Medicaid expansion in NFIB. It next explores the impacts of the opposition to Medicaid expansion. In particular, it details the substantial federal resources that opposing states will leave on the table, the health insurance coverage that states stand to deny to their poor citizens, and the constitutional law that opposing states left in NFIB.

The Framers' Federalism And The Affordable Care Act, 44 Conn. L. Rev. 1071 (2012), Steven D. Schwinn

Steven D. Schwinn

Federalism challenges to the Affordable Care Act ("ACA") are inspired by the relatively recent resurgence in federalism concerns in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence. Thus, ACA opponents seek to leverage the Court-created distinction between encouragement and compulsion (in opposition to Medicaid expansion), and the Court-created federalism concern when Congress regulates in a way that could destroy the distinction between what is national and what is local (in opposition to universal coverage). But outside the jurisprudence, the text and history of constitutional federalism tell another story. The text and history suggest that the Constitution created a powerful federal government, of the people …

Cholera As A Grave Violation Of The Right To Water In Haiti (2014), Sarah Dávila-Ruhaak, Steven D. Schwinn, Beatrice Lindstrom

Steven D. Schwinn

This report is submitted to the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation concerning the United Nation’s responsibility in spreading cholera in Haiti as a violation of the right to water and sanitation. The submission discusses violations of the right to water, including the role of United Nations peacekeepers in introducing the virus to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. The report addresses the United Nations’ unwillingness to accept responsibility for its role in the outbreak and its failure to establish redress mechanisms for victims affected by the cholera epidemic. It further discusses the …

King V. Burwell: Reflections On The Long And Bumpy Road To Aca Implementation, Mary Ann Chirba

Mary Ann Chirba

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Courts In The Debate On Assisted Suicide: A Communitarian Approach, 9 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol'y 367 (1995), Donald L. Beschle

Donald L. Beschle

No abstract provided.

Autonomous Decisionmaking And Social Choice: Examining The “Right To Die”, 77 Ky. L.J. 319 (1989), Donald L. Beschle

Donald L. Beschle

No abstract provided.

Judicial Review And Abortion In Canada: Lessons For The United States In The Wake Of Webster V. Reproductive Health Services, 61 U. Colo. L. Rev. 537 (1990), Donald L. Beschle

Donald L. Beschle

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Savage On Mentally Ill Convicts, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Obamacare: Potential Case-Shifting Between Workers' Compensation And Mainstream Health Care, Dean Hashimoto

Dean M. Hashimoto

A Dangerous Situation – The Knowing Transmission Of Hiv In An Out-Of-Body Form And Whether New York Should Criminally Punish Those Who Commit Such An Act, Griffin C. Kenyon

Pace Law Review

In June 2013 the New York State Court of Appeals held that the saliva of a defendant afflicted with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus ("HIV”) does not constitute a dangerous instrument so as to support a conviction for aggravated assault. Despite this holding, the question remains whether the administration of HIV in an out-of-body form to another individual qualifies for dangerous instrument treatment so as to subject greater criminal liability under the New York State Penal Law (“Penal Law”). Another question remains – should New York punish those who knowingly transmit HIV to another individual? If so, should the punishment be …

Slaying The Dragon: How The Law Can Help Rehab A Country In Crisis, Samantha Kopf

Pace Law Review

Motor-vehicle-related deaths consistently topped the accidental death count in the United States for decades. In 2009, for the first time, drug poisoning took over as the number one accidental killer. In 1980, approximately 6,100 people died from drug overdose. In the past ten years, the drug overdose rate for males and females, regardless of race, ethnicity and age, increased. In 2000, 4.1 per 100,000 people died from unintentional drug overdose; in 2010, that number rose to 9.7 per 100,000. The drug overdose epidemic, now the leading cause of unintentional death in the United States, warrants national attention.

To reduce the …

Allowing Patients To Waive The Right To Sue For Medical Malpractice: A Response To Thaler And Sunstein, Tom Baker, Timothy D. Lytton

Timothy D. Lytton

This essay critically evaluates Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s proposal to allow patients to prospectively waive their rights to bring a malpractice claim, presented in their recent, much acclaimed book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. We show that the behavioral insights that undergird Nudge do not support the waiver proposal. In addition, we demonstrate that Thaler and Sunstein have not provided a persuasive cost-benefit justification for the proposal. Finally, we argue that their liberty-based defense of waivers rests on misleading analogies and polemical rhetoric that ignore the liberty and other interests served by patients’ tort law rights. …

Good Medicine/Bad Medicine And The Law Of Evidence: Is There A Role For Proof Of Character, Propensity, Or Prior Bad Conduct In Medical Negligence Litigation?, 63 S.C. L. Rev. 367 (2011), Marc Ginsberg

Marc D. Ginsberg

No abstract provided.

Informed Consent: No Longer Just What The Doctor Ordered - The Contributions Of Medical Associations And Courts To A More Patient Friendly Doctrine, 15 Mich. St. U. J. Med. & L. 17 (2010), Marc Ginsberg

Marc D. Ginsberg

No abstract provided.