Law Commons^™

"Healthism": A Critique Of The Antidiscrimination Approach To Health Insurance And Health-Care Reform, Jessica Roberts

Jessica L. Roberts

Discussions of health-status discrimination permeated the debate surrounding the 2010 health-care reform legislation, infusing those conversations with the language of civil rights. However, insurance is by its very nature discriminatory. Thus, an antidiscrimination paradigm is not the appropriate normative framework for addressing disparities in health-insurance coverage. This Article identifies an unresolvable tension between the antidiscrimination approach embraced by health-care reform advocates and the private health-insurance industry, which the Affordable Care Act seeks to preserve. The private health-insurance industry has historically disadvantaged individuals based on health status through risk-assessment and cost-sharing mechanisms. Proponents of health-care reform vilified these accepted business practices …