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Full-Text Articles in Law
Pro-Choice Plans, Brendan S. Maher
Pro-Choice Plans, Brendan S. Maher
Faculty Scholarship
After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the United States Constitution may no longer protect abortion, but a surprising federal statute does. That statute is called the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”), and it has long been one of the most powerful preemptive statutes in the entire United States Code. ERISA regulates “employee benefit plans,” which are the vehicle by which approximately 155 million people receive their health insurance. Plans are thus a major private payer for health benefits—and therefore abortions. While many post-Dobbs anti-abortion laws directly bar abortion by making either the receipt or provision of …
Adding Principle To Pragmatism: The Transformative Potential Of "Medicare-For-All" In Post-Pandemic Health Reform, William M. Sage
Adding Principle To Pragmatism: The Transformative Potential Of "Medicare-For-All" In Post-Pandemic Health Reform, William M. Sage
Faculty Scholarship
“Medicare-for-All” should be more than a badge of political identity or opposition. This Article examines the concept’s potential to catalyze policy innovation in the U.S. health care system. After suggesting that the half century of existing Medicare has been as much “Gilded Age” as “Golden Age,” the Article arrays the operational possibilities for a Medicare-for-All initiative. It revisits America’s recent history of pragmatic rather than principled health policy, and identifies professional and political barriers to more sweeping reform. It focuses on four aspects of health policy that have become apparent: simultaneous inefficiency and injustice in medical care, neglect of the …
The Affordable Care Act And Health Promotion: The Role Of Insurance In Defining Responsibility For Health Risks And Costs, Wendy K. Mariner
The Affordable Care Act And Health Promotion: The Role Of Insurance In Defining Responsibility For Health Risks And Costs, Wendy K. Mariner
Faculty Scholarship
This article examines whether insurance is an appropriate mechanism for improving individual health or reducing the cost of health care for payers. The Affordable Care Act contains implicit standards for allocating responsibility for health, especially in provisions encouraging health promotion and wellness programs. A summary of the accumulating evidence of the effects of such programs suggests that wellness programs have been somewhat more effective in making people feel better than in reducing costs. Health promotion should be encouraged, because health is valuable for its own sake. Insurance is not well suited to improve health or manage behavioral risks to health; …
Health Reform: What's Insurance Got To Do With It? Recognizing Health Insurance As A Separate Species Of Insurance, Wendy K. Mariner
Health Reform: What's Insurance Got To Do With It? Recognizing Health Insurance As A Separate Species Of Insurance, Wendy K. Mariner
Faculty Scholarship
Health insurance can be, and to a large extent already is, a separate species of insurance. This article describes the different views of insurance that made health reform contentious. It argues that the goals of health reform are incompatible with conventional views of insurance. Nonetheless, reforming health insurance to achieve those goals does not require as dramatic shift as some might think, because health insurance has already become primarily a means of paying for health care, rather than a simple risk spreading device for specified losses.