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Full-Text Articles in Law
Private Insurance Limits And Responses, Elizabeth Weeks
Private Insurance Limits And Responses, Elizabeth Weeks
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The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a number of existing flaws in the United States’ patchwork approach to paying for and providing access to medical care. Shelter-in-place orders, social distancing, and other public health strategies employed to address the pandemic spawned a global recession, causing rapid and high unemployment rates in many countries. The U.S. unemployment rate peaked in April 2020 at 14.7%, higher than in any previous period since World War II. The United States has long hewed an anachronistic policy of relying heavily on private employers to provide health insurance to a substantial portion of the population. Those who are …
Healthism In Tort Law, Elizabeth Weeks
Healthism In Tort Law, Elizabeth Weeks
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This article draws on the author's recently published book, Healthism: Health Status Discrimination and the Law (with Jessica L. Roberts) (Cambridge University Press 2018), examining tort law doctrine and policy for examples of differential treatment of health status or behaviors. Just as scholars previously have drawn attention to discrimination based on race, sex, age, and other protected categories in tort law, the article urges similar examination of tort law's potential to discriminate against the unhealthy. The article discusses the potential for healthism in the reasonably prudent person standard of care, contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, noneconomic damages caps, impaired …
Medicaid At 50: No Longer Limited To The "Deserving" Poor?, David Orentlicher
Medicaid At 50: No Longer Limited To The "Deserving" Poor?, David Orentlicher
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Professor David Orentlicher considers the significance of the passage of the Affordable Care Act on the Medicaid program. He discusses the expansion of the program's recipients from merely children, pregnant women, single caretakers of children, and disabled persons to all persons up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Professor Orentlicher argues that the Medicaid expansion reflects concerns about the high costs of health care rather than an evolution in societal thinking about the "deserving" poor. As a result, the expansion may not provide a stable source of health care coverage for the expansion population.
The Individual Mandate's Due Process Legality: A Kantian Explanation, And Why It Matters, Peter Brandon Bayer
The Individual Mandate's Due Process Legality: A Kantian Explanation, And Why It Matters, Peter Brandon Bayer
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In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, one of the most controversial decisions of this young century, an intensely divided Supreme Court upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's most provocative feature-the Individual Mandate-under Congress's taxing power. In so doing, the Court rejected what appeared to be the Individual Mandate's more applicable constitutional premise-Congress's authority to regulate interstate commerce. Yet, neither the Constitution's Taxing Clause nor its Commerce Clause provide the ultimate answer as to whether Congress may regulate the multi-billion dollar healthcare market by compelling unwilling persons to buy private health insurance. The final determination of the …
Doctors, Hmos, Erisa, And The Public Interest After Pegram V. Herdrich, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Nadia Von Magdenko
Doctors, Hmos, Erisa, And The Public Interest After Pegram V. Herdrich, Jeffrey W. Stempel, Nadia Von Magdenko
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The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 was enacted in the wake of highly publicized pension disasters in order to protect employee pension rights. Born as a piece of pro-worker legislation, it initially was criticized by business groups as a cause of bureaucratic arteriosclerosis that was worse than the disease of pension failures. Even worse, it prompted many employers to consider dispensing with pension plans altogether rather than struggle with the administrative and financial obligations of ERISA. Business, labor, and the public all complained about the law's complexity. It even became something of a national joke as regulators took …
Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Recent Case Developments, Jeffrey W. Stempel
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Recent case developments in Insurance Law in the years 1999 and 2000.