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2001

Journal of Law and Health

Articles 1 - 21 of 21

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Stifling Of Competition By The Antitrust Laws: The Irony Of The Health Care Industry, John A. Powers Jan 2001

The Stifling Of Competition By The Antitrust Laws: The Irony Of The Health Care Industry, John A. Powers

Journal of Law and Health

The text to follow is intended to provide an overview of the legal basis for the imbalance of power currently inherent to the health care industry, suggesting several reasons for its development. It also provides an outline of the current basis for antitrust liability in this country and describes some possible solutions. The most practical and effective means through which to rectify this imbalance would be to enact new federal legislation that would amend the antitrust laws to allow for limited "unionization" of independently practicing physicians for collective bargaining purposes.

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Genomic Medicine: The Human Genome Project From A Healthcare Provider's Perspective, Georgia Wiesner Jan 2001

Genomic Medicine: The Human Genome Project From A Healthcare Provider's Perspective, Georgia Wiesner

Journal of Law and Health

But the Human Genome Project from my point of view as a healthcare provider has really been on what advantages and what advances can we be able to provide from that. So we really learned a lot about how genes work, how they talk together and how we actually have both health and disease as a consequence of the Human Genome Project. So really understanding this complex interaction is one of the most exciting things as well. What this really has done for healthcare is allowed us to individualize our healthcare. To be able to say for one person against …

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Denying Medical Staff Privileges Based On Economic Credentials , Sandra Difranco Jan 2001

Denying Medical Staff Privileges Based On Economic Credentials , Sandra Difranco

Journal of Law and Health

Health care costs are continuing to rise. This forces hospitals to consider the cost and efficiency of each physician when making privileging decisions. However, hospitals cannot deny a competitor physician staff privileges strictly based on economic factors. If this is the only consideration that the hospital utilizes, a denial or restriction of privileges based solely on competitive considerations may expose the hospital to liability under federal antitrust as well as state tort claims. This Note will focus primarily on Ohio laws and statutes. A comparison with other jurisdictions also will be analyzed. This Note will illustrate the complexities and ambiguities …

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Can Employers Put Genetic Information To Good Use, Kathleen C. Engel Jan 2001

Can Employers Put Genetic Information To Good Use, Kathleen C. Engel

Journal of Law and Health

In my talk today I am going to try to answer the question: Can employers put genetic information to good use? Preparing this talk was a challenge because it required me to switch sides of the table. Having represented plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases for ten years, my inclination is to focus on the ways that employers can use genetic information to the detriment of their workers. I chose to talk about the value of genetic information from the employers' perspective because I wanted to force myself to engage in a disciplined study of the issues, rather than simply don …

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Reasons To Eschew Federal Lawmaking And Embrace Common Law Approaches To Genetic Discrimination, S. Candice Hoke Jan 2001

Reasons To Eschew Federal Lawmaking And Embrace Common Law Approaches To Genetic Discrimination, S. Candice Hoke

Journal of Law and Health

Professor Hoffman and I agree: there ought to be some laws, but I want to talk to you a little bit about two possible, two real goals here. One is to ask you to critically evaluate whether a federal statute is the right remedial response at this point in time, and secondly, to ask you to start thinking about the possibility of drafting into service what we in law refer to as traditional state common-law approaches that actually might give us more and better ways to remedy what's going on than simply turning to Congress.

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Lessons Taught By Miss Evers' Boys: The Inadequacy Of Benevolence And The Need For Legal Protection Of Human Subjects In Medical Research , Donald H.J. Hermann Jan 2001

Lessons Taught By Miss Evers' Boys: The Inadequacy Of Benevolence And The Need For Legal Protection Of Human Subjects In Medical Research , Donald H.J. Hermann

Journal of Law and Health

The Tuskegee study is perhaps the most notorious example of abuse in medical research in the United States. It is significant that the project was not ended until twenty-five years after the adoption of the Nuremberg Code of 1948, the first article of which establishes its principle that human subjects should not be experimented on without their consent. Continuing concern about the ethics of medical and scientific research have been fueled by finding about other research abuse such as the radiation experiments in the 1940's and 1950's that involved subjects being injected with plutonium without their knowledge and feeding radioactive …

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Pink Slip Introduction, Dena S. Davis Jan 2001

Pink Slip Introduction, Dena S. Davis

Journal of Law and Health

What has changed however, is the degree of worry and concern that people feel about the uses to which their genetic information can be put. When the HGP (Human Genome Project) began, a number of pundits were convinced that the "future knowledge" that genetic information can deliver to consumers and insurers alike would completely undermine the practice of private health insurance, and send our current system crashing to the ground. Needless to say, that has not happened; but with 42 million Americans currently without health insurance, and with insurance tightly entwined with employment, many people fear that genetic information will …

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Is There A Pink Slip In Your Genes?, J. B. Silvers Jan 2001

Is There A Pink Slip In Your Genes?, J. B. Silvers

Journal of Law and Health

On the insurance company side, it's clear that insurance companies are not well loved by folks. They're not even supposed to do that. At one point after a company had approached QualChoice and told us not to tell the enrollees something that, in fact, had been a policy decision by the company, I was suggesting that perhaps we should change the name to the company to the "Scapegoat Insurance Company," since that really was what we were being paid for, and I think in this argument that may be part of the issue here.

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Routine Patient Care In Clinical Trials: Whose Cost Is It Anyway?, Dina Berlyn Jan 2001

Routine Patient Care In Clinical Trials: Whose Cost Is It Anyway?, Dina Berlyn

Journal of Law and Health

This article examines the issue of coverage for routine medical expenses for clinical trial patients by third party payers from both a medical and political policy perspective. It is critical for patients, investigators, and sponsors to know who is responsible for paying these costs. This issue affects the willingness of patients to enter clinical trials and has the potential to affect which diseases will be the subjects of clinical trials. This presentation first summarizes the basics of clinical trials and then explores the definition of routine care in clinical trials. Medicare reimbursement, an issue that has been the subject of …

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Legislation And Genetic Discrimination, Sharona Hoffman Jan 2001

Legislation And Genetic Discrimination, Sharona Hoffman

Journal of Law and Health

State legislation addresses genetic discrimination in both employment and health insurance. Thirty-one states have passed laws that address genetic discrimination in employment. Approximately thirteen states prohibit employers from requiring applicants to undergo genetic testing as a condition of employment. Some states have more limited restrictions. Florida prohibits only the screening of applicants for the sickle-cell trait. Wisconsin requires employers to obtain written and informed consent from applicants prior to administering genetic tests, but does not preclude their utilization altogether. Some states establish exceptions that permit genetic testing that is job-related or that is conducted, with the employee's written and informed …

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Application Of Administrative Law To Health Care Reform: The Real Politik Of Crossing The Quality Chasm , Thomas R. Mclean Jan 2001

Application Of Administrative Law To Health Care Reform: The Real Politik Of Crossing The Quality Chasm , Thomas R. Mclean

Journal of Law and Health

Real Politik, a term in vogue at the height of the Cold War, contemplates that in practice, governmental bodies attempt to expand their spheres of influence and control by the application of economic leverage. The federal government is clearly interested in expanding its influence into health care because of its cost. Americans spend over one trillion dollars - forty-four percent of which is paid for by the federal government - on health care each year. To control the cost of health care, governmental reformers proposed the Health Securities Act of 1993 as a frontal assault on the American health care …

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Genetic Discrimination: Does It Exist, And What Are Its Implications?, Paul Steven Miller Jan 2001

Genetic Discrimination: Does It Exist, And What Are Its Implications?, Paul Steven Miller

Journal of Law and Health

Does genetic discrimination exist? Thus far, there have been no cases other than Burlington Northern and maybe a couple of other cases which have been filed by plaintiffs in either federal or state court. Notwithstanding all of the statutes, there haven't been a tremendous amount of charges coming in, people coming to the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), or to respective state agencies and even filing charges. This fact confuses me, because I actually believe that genetic discrimination, as we've been talking about it, is happening more often in the real world than this charge flow would indicate.

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Constitutional Classifications And The Gay Gene, Susan Becker Jan 2001

Constitutional Classifications And The Gay Gene, Susan Becker

Journal of Law and Health

What I am going to talk about is the use of genetic information to classify individuals for purposes of the law, and more specifically, the impact of the so-called "gay gene" on legal classifications. What is really important here, and the reason I need to offer you a primer on constitutional law, is so that we all start on the same page by understanding how our laws, starting with the federal constitution, classify people for the purpose of bestowing or denying rights and benefits. This leads us to an understanding of why people object to various classifications, and an appreciation …

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Genetic Testing And Employment Litigation, Harry Zanville Jan 2001

Genetic Testing And Employment Litigation, Harry Zanville

Journal of Law and Health

There are a number of very surprising studies that talk about the absolute amenability of these healthcare providers to turn over information without authority. So when we go over those kinds of facts and in some cases partial assumption together, you end up in a context where bad things can happen to good people, and that's what the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) case really was about.

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Misperception And Misapplication Of The First Amendment In The American Pluralistic System: Mergers Between Catholic And Non-Catholic Healthcare Systems, Jason M. Kellhofer Jan 2001

Misperception And Misapplication Of The First Amendment In The American Pluralistic System: Mergers Between Catholic And Non-Catholic Healthcare Systems, Jason M. Kellhofer

Journal of Law and Health

This note questions the wisdom of those who content that Catholic health providers, to constitutionally qualify for government assistance or be permitted to merge with public entities, must be stripped of that which makes them most effective - their religious identity. The threat to sectarian healthcare has steadily been on the rise as can be seen in actions such as the American Public Health Association's recent approval of a policy statement recommending more government oversight to preclude the dropping of reproductive services when Catholic and Non-Catholic hospitals merge. Section II explores why these mergers occur and why certain services are …

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The Affordable Prescription Drugs Act: A Solution For Today's High Prescription Drug Prices , John D. Pinzone Jan 2001

The Affordable Prescription Drugs Act: A Solution For Today's High Prescription Drug Prices , John D. Pinzone

Journal of Law and Health

This article will discuss a recently proposed bill, The Affordable Prescription Drugs Act (APDA), and how it will attempt to strike a balance between reducing prices to make essential drugs more available and affordable, and working with pharmaceutical companies to make sure they profit and invest their money into research and development of new essential drugs. It argues that the APDA increases competition in the market place, thus reducing the price of prescription drugs, while still allowing pharmaceutical companies to profit from their inventions. In reaching this conclusion this article examines the bill itself, how to define an essential drug, …

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Genetic Testing And Employment Litigation, Harry Zanville Jan 2001

Genetic Testing And Employment Litigation, Harry Zanville

Journal of Law and Health

I have only a couple of comments to make that relate to litigation hurdles and how to achieve this balance, and the first thing I want to talk about, following the wonderful presentation is, in fact, we probably don't in some ways even need a new cause of action.

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Internet Pharmacies: Cyberspace Versus The Regulatory State , Ty Clevenger Jan 2001

Internet Pharmacies: Cyberspace Versus The Regulatory State , Ty Clevenger

Journal of Law and Health

The unique qualities of e-commerce make it difficult to regulate under any circumstances, but the growth of online pharmacies in particular is far outpacing the ability of government officials to investigate and enforce existing drug laws. In 1999, Americans spent an estimated $44 million purchasing prescription drugs from online pharmacies, a figure that is projected to reach $1 billion per year by 2003. In December of 1999, President Clinton proposed $10 million in new funding for the FDA to regulate Internet pharmacies and hire 100 new employees, but the FDA has yet to explain whether this would be enough to …

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The Strict Ohio Supreme Court Decision In Biddle: Third Party Law Firm Held Liable For Inducing Disclosure Of Medical Information , Kimberly Rathbone Jan 2001

The Strict Ohio Supreme Court Decision In Biddle: Third Party Law Firm Held Liable For Inducing Disclosure Of Medical Information , Kimberly Rathbone

Journal of Law and Health

Victims of unauthorized disclosures of medical information have enjoyed strict protection by state and federal courts. This is because secrecy is considered a sacred requirement in order to foster honesty and cooperation between a physician and patient. Confidentiality is considered such a vital ingredient to the physician-patient relationship by the medical profession that it is addressed in the oath, which is a prerequisite to admittance into the field of medicine: "All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or outside of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not be spread abroad, …

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Washington V. Glucksberg: Influence Of The Court In Care Of The Terminally Ill And Physician Assisted Suicide, Philip King Jan 2001

Washington V. Glucksberg: Influence Of The Court In Care Of The Terminally Ill And Physician Assisted Suicide, Philip King

Journal of Law and Health

This Note will examine current issues pertaining to the medical care of the terminally ill individual, particularly with respect to palliative care and how the continuum of medical care incorporates the voluntary termination of a patient's life. Part II of this Note will look at the decision reached in Washington v. Glucksberg, and how the Supreme Court has contributed to the molding of care for the terminally ill. Part III will review relevant aspects of end of life care concepts and their relationship and impact upon the assisted suicide alternative. Any analysis of physician assisted suicide must include the evolution …

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Cardiovascular Genetics: Case Studies, Kenneth G. Zahka Jan 2001

Cardiovascular Genetics: Case Studies, Kenneth G. Zahka

Journal of Law and Health

What I'd like to do in the next 10 or 15 minutes is use a case approach which we all use in medicine as you use in law to give you a flavor for how we as clinicians think about things that are oftentimes obviously genetic. But I want to stress to you that probably a day does not go by or a patient does not go by where I don't think in terms of genetic issues for their cardiovascular health.

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