Law Commons^™

Sb 106 - Patients First Act, Jasmine Nicole Becerra, Leanne E. Livingston

Georgia State University Law Review

The Patients First Act amends both Title 49 and Title 33 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, which allows the state to apply for two federal waivers. One being the Section 1115 waiver to the Social Security Act. The second being the Section 1332 waiver to the Affordable Care Act. Section 1115 waivers apply to Medicaid and may be sought to include a maximum income threshold up to 100% of the Federal Poverty Level. The Section 1332 innovation waiver applies to insurance coverage generally.

Bearing Hospital Tax Breaks: How Non-Profits Benefit From Your Surprise Medical Bills, Taylor N. Armstrong

Georgia State University Law Review

This Note addresses the growing issue of surprise medical bills and how the United States Tax Code can be used to prevent many patients from receiving these bills. Part I provides a background on surprise billing and market factors that have led to an increase in the bills as well as current legislative solutions to the problem. Part II analyzes the role that hospitals play in the insurance market, the current standards for nonprofit hospitals to receive tax exemption under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) § 501, and how these legal standards fall short of accomplishing the goals of the tax …

Sb 17 - Alcoholic Beverages, Lauren A. Newman, Erin N. Winn

Georgia State University Law Review

Georgia law previously allowed counties and municipalities to permit the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sundays from 12:30 P.M. until 11:30 P.M. This Act, deemed “the Brunch Bill,” authorizes the counties and municipalities that have affirmatively voted by referendum to sell alcoholic beverages on Sundays to sell them earlier, at 11:00 A.M., if approved by a second referendum vote. This change applies to restaurants that make at least 50% of their revenue from the sale of food and hotels, and Georgia wineries.

The Overdose/Homicide Epidemic, Valena E. Beety

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article explores the lack of regulation of coroners, concerns within the forensic science community on the reliability of coroner determinations, and ultimately, how elected laypeople serving as coroners may influence the rise in drug-induced homicide prosecutions in the midst of the opioid epidemic.

This Article proposes that the manner of death determination contributes to overdoses being differently prosecuted; that coroners in rural counties are more likely to determine the manner of death for an illicit substance overdose is homicide; and that coroners are provided with insufficient training on interacting with the criminal justice system, particularly on overdose deaths. Death …

Reforming Regenerative Medicine Regulation, Sarah Duranske

Georgia State University Law Review

Regenerative medicine is defined as the branch of medicine that develops methods to regrow, repair, or replace damaged or diseased cells or tissues. It includes a variety of approaches, such as transplanting cells to promote healing, editing genes in cells to attack cancer, and even building organs from biological materials. Regulating regenerative medicine therapies is no easy task. Finding a balance between competing interests–enabling timely access for needy patients while simultaneously ensuring a positive benefit/risk profile and promoting the development of beneficial innovations–is hard enough at any given point in time. But add in constantly advancing scientific knowledge and increasing …

Whose Sperm Is It Anyways In The Wild, Wild West Of The Fertility Industry?, Tatiana E. Posada

Georgia State University Law Review

Imagine a couple that is unable to conceive a child naturally. Luckily, they had the money and resources available to them to conceive a child through assisted reproductive technology (ART), so they decided to start their family through the use of intrauterine insemination. They selected a sperm bank and began the arduous process of selecting a sperm donor who fit the desired traits and characteristics for their child. The sperm bank matched them with an anonymous donor, Donor 9623, and assured the couple that the donor was “a healthy male with an IQ of 160, a bachelor’s of science in …

Don’T Let The Bed Bugs Bill: Landlord Liability For Bed Bug Infestations In Georgia, Megan M. Harrison

Georgia State University Law Review

Although the historical relationship between bed bugs and humans dates back to ancient Egypt, the common bed bug, or Cimex lectularius, vanished from the beds of Americans around World War II. In the late 1990s, however, our bloodsucking bedfellows returned. Bed bug infestations are a growing public health issue. Bed bugs are now found in all fifty states, with populations in five states reaching epidemic levels. Both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) consider bed bugs a “pest of significant public health importance."

Despite their name, bed bugs are not limited to …

Sb 201 - Sick Leave, Mary Elizabeth D. Steinhaus, Chadwick L. Williams

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act amends Georgia’s general provisions relating to labor and industrial relations by adding a new provision that requires qualifying employers to allow their employees to use sick leave to care for immediate family members.

Sb 104 - Carjacking, Fentanyl And "Upskirting", Katherine H. Krouse, Lauren R. Light

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act includes various amendments to Georgia’s criminal code. Three changes are most notable. First, the Act designates the offense of hijacking a motor vehicle as hijacking a motor vehicle in the first degree and creates the offense of hijacking a motor vehicle in the second degree. Second, the Act criminalizes the use of a device to film underneath or through an individual’s clothing. Lastly, the Act adds the drug Fentanyl and its various analogs to the list of controlled substances.

Hb 249 - Controlled Substances And Prescription Drug Monitoring Database, Emily R. Polk, Brandon M. Reed

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act amends Georgia’s controlled-substances statutes to expand medical provider requirements to record prescription drug information in an electronic prescription drug monitoring program database (PDMP). Medical providers are now required to use the PDMP to enter information about their prescription of certain types and quantities of opioids. The purpose of the act is to fight Schedule II opioid abuse throughout the state of Georgia. A medical provider’s failure to report required information is reported to his or her respective state regulatory board for possible reprimand. In addition to mandatory reporting, the Act includes various other provisions related to regulating opioid …

Hb 359 - Power Of Attorney, Roma A. Amin, Catherine V. Schutz

Georgia State University Law Review

The bill would have repealed and replaced Georgia’s Power of Attorney for the Care of a Minor Child Act. The category of people who could be given power of attorney for the care of a minor child would have expanded from only grandparents and great-grandparents to a broad category of the child’s relatives, and anyone associated with a non-profit organization focused on child or family services or a licensed child-placing agency.

2016-2017 Georgia State University Law Review Symposium: Exploring The Right To Die In The U.S., Margaret Pabst Battin

Georgia State University Law Review

This transcript is a reproduction of the Keynote Presentation at the 2016–2017 Georgia State University Law Review Symposium on November 11, 2016. Margaret Battin, is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah.

Distinctive Factors Affecting The Legal Context Of End-Of-Life Medical Care For Older Persons, Marshall B. Kapp

Georgia State University Law Review

Current legal regulation of medical care for individuals approaching the end of life in the United States is predicated essentially on a factual model emanating from a series of high-profile judicial opinions concerning the rights of adults who become either permanently unconscious or are clearly going to die soon with or without aggressive attempts of curative therapy.

The need for a flexible, adaptable approach to medically treating people approaching the end of their lives, and a similar openness to possible modification of the legal framework within which treatment choices are made and implemented, are particularly important when older individuals are …

Unbefriended And Unrepresented: Better Medical Decision Making For Incapacitated Patients Without Healthcare Surrogates, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Georgia State University Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to help improve the quality of healthcare decision making for the unbefriended. I hope that this comprehensive and systematic explanation of both the problem and the available solutions will empower both public and clinical policymakers to develop more informed and more circumspect policies and procedures

Workin’ 9:00–5:00 For Nine Months: Assessing Pregnancy Discrimination Laws In Georgia, Kaitlyn Pettet

Georgia State University Law Review

As demonstrated in this Note, there is still a considerable way to go before women are no longer forced to choose between pregnancy and keeping their career. Allegations of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace are also on the rise.

In 1997, 4,000 plaintiffs filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). By 2011, that number rose to 5,800. The EEOC won significant damages in pregnancy discrimination cases, demonstrating a greater tendency towards discrimination in the workplace. Additionally, this rise in claims and awards caught the attention of the nation’s media, placing new emphasis on the treatment of pregnant women …

An Empirical Assessment Of Georgia’S Beyond A Reasonable Doubt Standard To Determine Intellectual Disability In Capital Cases, Lauren Sudeall Lucas

Georgia State University Law Review

In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that execution of people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In doing so, the Court explicitly left to the states the question of which procedures would be used to identify such defendants as exempt from the death penalty. More than a decade before Atkins, Georgia was the first state to bar execution of people with intellectual disability. Yet, of the states that continue to impose the death penalty as a punishment for capital murder, Georgia is the only state that requires capital defendants …

Tackling The Social Determinants Of Health: A Central Role For Providers, Jessica Mantel

Georgia State University Law Review

Americans’ poor health and high health care costs largely stem from social, environmental, and behavioral factors that adversely impact health. Yet, health care providers traditionally have neglected the social determinants of health, focusing instead on medically treating patients’ symptoms. As a result, addressing the social determinants of health has primarily been the domain of government and community groups. Unfortunately, the efforts of the public health and social services sectors are stymied by chronic underfunding, a situation unlikely to change in the current political environment. This article identifies a potential solution to this problem: recent health care reforms that encourage health …

Hovering Too Close: The Ramifications Of Helicopter Parenting In Higher Education, Kathleen Vinson

Georgia State University Law Review

“They are needy, overanxious and sometimes plain pesky—and schools at every level are trying to find ways to deal with them. No, not students. Parents—specifically parents of today’s ‘millennial generation’ who, many educators are discovering, can’t let their kids go.”

Some parents, called “helicopter parents” for constantly hovering over their children, are now making higher institutions their landing pads. They hover from the prospective admissions stage to graduation and the job market beyond—contacting presidents of universities, deans, and professors, disputing their child’s grade; requesting an extension for their child; complaining their child does not receive as much praise as the …