Law Commons^™

Federalization Snowballs: The Need For National Action In Medical Malpractice Reform, Abigail R. Moncrieff

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Because tort law and healthcare regulation are traditional state functions and because medical, legal, and insurance practices are localized, legal scholars have long believed that medical malpractice falls within the states' exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty. This conventional view fails to consider the impact that federal healthcare programs have on the states' incentives to regulate. As a result of federal financing, each state externalizes some of the costs of its malpractice policy onto the federal government. The federal government therefore needs to take charge of medical malpractice in order to fix the spillover problem created by existing federal healthcare programs.

Importantly, …

Law In The Healthcare Crisis, John W. Hill

John W Hill Sr

The U.S. faces a healthcare crisis of monumental proportions with myriad facets including issues of access, quality, and affordability. Medical malpractice liability in this crisis is often alleged to play a role in this crisis through its impact on physician compensation and shortages. This study goes beyond the rhetorical arguments in exposing the root causes of the crisis to be the structure of healthcare delivery and physician compensation systems, in part using pooled data we develop. These systems greatly increase the cost of healthcare, lead to far too many medical errors, and skew the distribution of physicians across specialties, in …

The Elderly And Health Care Rationing, George P. Smith Ii

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The allocation of health care resources involves a societal determination of what resources should be devoted to a particular program. The allocation process is typically performed on a ―macro‖ level, with allocation decisions often affecting only statistical lives. In contrast to the identifiable lives often affected by health care rationing, statistical lives affected by allocation decisions are much more readily sacrificed. A common means of deciding health care allocation is through political processes. Government decisions pertaining to health care spending and regulation typically involve allocation determinations. For example, the Medicare and Medicaid programs allocate resources for numerous purposes. Hospitals, …

Entitlements: Not Just A Health Care Problem, Andrew G. Biggs

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “A new consensus on entitlement reform has developed in Washington: rising per-capita health care spending is the only real crisis besetting the government‘s entitlement programs, while America‘s aging population and Social Security play minor roles at best. Some cite this view to shift the policy emphasis from entitlement cost control to the restructuring of the U.S. health sector, including private health care. But this new consensus is flawed. Using standard accounting practices and including all major government entitlement programs, population aging will play an equal role with health care cost growth over the next seventy-five years and a significantly …

Review Of Reforming Medicare: Options, Tradeoffs, And Opportunities, Jill R. Horwitz

Reviews

Medicare needs fixing. The program has its strengths; it is popular among beneficiaries, has very low administrative costs (maybe too low), and, since its inception, has greatly reduced financial risk exposure among beneficiaries. Nevertheless, it is unaffordable and inefficient. Jeanne Lambrew and Henry Aaron take up both of these challenges for Medicare reform in great detail in Reforming Medicare.

Kidney Transplantation: Only For The Well-To-Do?, Jennifer M. Smith

Journal Publications

The world of organ transplantation remains a wealthy one, especially in the United States. This is especially true for kidney transplantations, which involve the solid organ most in demand. Increasingly, transplant professionals desperately push for more solutions to overcome the organ transplant shortage that exists in the United States. Congress has introduced legislation that addresses the additional problem of the high cost of post-transplant anti-rejection medications by providing that the government will pay eighty percent of the cost for the post-transplant medications for life. But unless this bill passes and other needed changes are made, kidney transplantation remains an option …

The Ethics Of Health Care Reform: Unintended Consequences Of Payment Schemes And Regulatory Mandates, Rebecca D. Elon

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

From Concierge Medicine To Patient-Centered Medical Homes: International Lessons And The Search For A Better Way To Deliver Primary Health Care In The U.S, Gwendolyn R. Majette

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This paper will proceed in eight parts. Part II explores why primary care is a critical component of a country's health care delivery system. Part III describes patient and physician dissatisfaction with the current state of primary care delivery in the United States. Parts IV and V describe physician-designed solutions and Congress' responses to them. Part VI describes the role of primary care in the delivery of health services in the international context by focusing on the World Health Organization's Health for All policy and the policies supporting primary care in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Part VII …

To Pay Or Not To Pay: Medicare And The Preventable Adverse Event: A Rational Decision Of Dangerous Philosophical Change, Amy J. Chaho M.D.

Journal of Law and Health

The proposed Medicare reimbursement schedule intended to become effective in October 2008 represents a drastic change to the traditional policy of payment for needed services. The proposal mandates that certain preventable adverse events should not be reimbursed. This spending scheme is intended to improve quality while decreasing cost to the Medicare system. The goals of the spending scheme are laudable. Quality improvement, when used to improve the health, safety and general welfare of the intended patient beneficiary of the Medicare program, is a rational and compelling government interest that warrants coercive use of authorized spending power. This beneficial interest may …

Tenure Buyouts: Employment Death Taxes And The Curious Obesity Of "Wages", Bobby Dexter

Bobby L. Dexter

Prior to January of 1994, institutions of higher education could appeal to an exemption in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 to force the retirement of tenured faculty members who had attained the age of seventy. With the expiration of that exemption, tenured faculty members may now retire well after that age, and for various personal and professional reasons, the postponement phenomenon is widespread. Despite the considerable appeal of a tenure buyout system, there is a real question as to whether buyout payments are subject to payroll taxes as “wages” with respect to “employment;” U.S. Courts of Appeals …