Law Commons^™

What Congress's Repeal Efforts Can Teach Us About Regulatory Reform, Cary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler

All Faculty Scholarship

Major legislative actions during the early part of the 115th Congress have undermined the central argument for regulatory reform measures such as the REINS Act, a bill that would require congressional approval of all new major regulations. Proponents of the REINS Act argue that it would make the federal regulatory system more democratic by shifting responsibility for regulatory decisions away from unelected bureaucrats and toward the people’s representatives in Congress. But separate legislative actions in the opening of the 115th Congress only call this argument into question. Congress’s most significant initiatives during this period — its derailed attempts to repeal …

Partitioning Sorted Sets: Overcoming Choice Overload While Maintaining Decision Quality, Benedict C.G. Dellaert, Tom Baker, Eric J. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

We investigate the joint use of partitioning and sorting as a choice architecture to overcome consumer choice overload in large product sets. Partitioning first presents a small initial set of alternatives with the option to click through to see the remaining alternatives. Sorting presents alternatives in order of attractiveness based on a user model that is helpful to the decision-maker. We propose that Sets with Partitioning and Sorting (SPSs) improve consumers’ choice outcomes by increasing their focus on the most attractive alternatives and their use of more compensatory decisions. Results from two controlled survey-based experiments and a field study in …

The Effect Of Health Insurance Coverage Expansions On Auto Liability Claims And Costs, Srikanth Kadiyala, Paul Heaton

All Faculty Scholarship

How do the Affordable Care Act health insurance coverage expansions affect payment for medical care provided through liability insurance, such as auto insurance? Theoretically, expanding coverage might lead to a substitution of health insurance disbursements for automobile insurance disbursements. Alternatively, expanding health insurance coverage might increase utilization of medical care, increasing auto liability claims payments. The net effect of these two mechanisms can only be determined empirically. We evaluate the health insurance-auto insurance interaction by examining the 2010 ACA dependent coverage expansion. Prior to 2010, individuals 19 and older were excluded from health insurance coverage under their parental health insurance …

Exploitation In Medical Research: The Enduring Legacy Of The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Ruqaiijah A. Yearby

All Faculty Scholarship

For forty years, the United States government allowed economically disadvantaged African American men to be exploited in the name of research, although the research could not generate any benefit to society. Specifically, from 1932 until 1972, government funded researchers enrolled economically disadvantaged African American men in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to document the already known course of syphilis, which led to the men suffering sores, fever, hair loss, weight loss, headaches, paralysis, blindness, dementia, and death. In exchange for free meals, medical exams, and burial insurance, the researchers promised the men that they would provide treatment for their “bad blood,” …

From The Technical To The Personal: Teaching And Learning Health Insurance Regulation And Reform, Allison K. Hoffman, Whitney A. Brown, Lindsay Cutler

All Faculty Scholarship

In the Fall of 2016, I taught Health Law and Policy for the fourth consecutive semester. Over time, one thing has become increasingly clear: the aspect of this course that I work with most closely as a scholar—the regulation of health care financing and insurance, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)—is also the material that I find the most challenging to teach. Every time I reflect on teaching this material, and hear from students about how they learn this material, the thing that stands out is how critical it is that my students understand the profound impact …

The Poverty Of The Neuroscience Of Poverty: Policy Payoff Or False Promise?, Amy L. Wax

All Faculty Scholarship

A recent body of work in neuroscience examines the brains of people suffering from social and economic disadvantage. This article assesses claims that this research can help generate more effective strategies for addressing these social conditions and their effects. It concludes that the so-called neuroscience of deprivation has no unique practical payoff, and that scientists, journalists, and policy-makers should stop claiming otherwise. Because this research does not, and generally cannot, distinguish between innate versus environmental causes of brain characteristics, it cannot predict whether neurological and behavioral deficits can be addressed by reducing social deprivation. Also, knowledge of brain mechanisms yields …

Special Issue "Health Care Law And The Rights Of Individuals With Disabilities", Elizabeth Pendo, Guest Editor

All Faculty Scholarship

People with disabilities are vulnerable. They carry high risk for poor health and health outcomes. As a group, they experience social disadvantages such as poverty, underemployment and unemployment, isolation, and discrimination at a higher rate than the general population. They also face multiple barriers to quality health care and report poorer health status than people without disabilities. This Special Issue will explore the key health disparities and barriers to health care experienced by people with disabilities, and explore the legal, ethical, and social issues they raise. It will investigate the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities and other antidiscrimination …

Editor, "Health Care Law And The Rights Of Individuals With Disabilities", Elizabeth Pendo

All Faculty Scholarship

People with disabilities are vulnerable. They carry high risk for poor health and health outcomes. As a group, they experience social disadvantages such as poverty, underemployment and unemployment, isolation, and discrimination at a higher rate than the general population. They also face multiple barriers to quality health care and report poorer health status than people without disabilities. This Special Issue will explore the key health disparities and barriers to health care experienced by people with disabilities, and explore the legal, ethical, and social issues they raise. It will investigate the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities and other antidiscrimination …

Preventing Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Within The Opioid Epidemic: A Uniform Facilitative Policy, Jeremiah A. Ho, Alexander Rovzar

All Faculty Scholarship

The United States is currently in the midst of an opioid epidemic that has hit states in the southern New England regions particularly hard — with Massachusetts as one primary example. One of the many unfortunate results of the epidemic is a dramatic upsurge in cases of opioid dependency by expectant women that result in children born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). NAS is a clinical syndrome that occurs when a newborn suffers withdrawal symptoms as a consequence of abrupt discontinuation of prenatal substance exposure. The expenses of treating and rehabilitating these drug-dependent newborns, predominantly shouldered by state taxpayers, are …

Why Baby Markets Aren’T Free, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

Creating families in the twenty-first century increasingly happens in markets where the buying and selling of reproductive goods and services are facilitated by advanced technologies, the internet, contracts, and state laws and policies. Thus, the title of this international congress—“Baby Markets”—aptly captures a key aspect of modern reproduction. The ability of potential parents to engage in market transactions involving children enhances parents’ autonomy over their family lives. The free market seems to liberate us from the constraints of biology and state control.

This Essay argues, however, that baby markets aren’t free. Three aspects of the way reproductive goods and services …

The Priority Review Voucher Program At The Fda: From Neglected Tropical Diseases To The 21st Century Cures Act, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

The priority review voucher program at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was established in 2007 to incentivize research and development (R&D) in traditionally underfunded diseases.1 While shrouded in controversy and criticism, the program has recently been bolstered by the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act,2 which prevented the vouchers from sunsetting in late 2016 and furthered the overall scope of the program.3 As it reaches the end of its first decade, this Article discusses the impact of the program, with a focus on recent developments. The Article builds on literature suggesting that the voucher program has been ineffective …

Lessons From Ferguson And Beyond: Bias, Health, And Justice, Sidney D. Watson

All Faculty Scholarship

August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American teen, killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri.

November 22, 2014, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American child, killed by police in Cleveland, Ohio.

April 4, 2015, Walter Scott, a 50-year-old African American man, killed by police in Charlotte, North Carolina.

November 15, 2015, Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old African American man, killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

July 6, 2016, Philando Castile, a 32-year-old African American man, killed by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

The list of Black men and women killed by police goes on and seems to grow by the …