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Full-Text Articles in Law
After Tackett: Incomplete Contracts For Post-Employment Healthcare, Maria O'Brien
After Tackett: Incomplete Contracts For Post-Employment Healthcare, Maria O'Brien
Faculty Scholarship
This paper examines the recent U.S. Supreme Court retiree health care decision in Tackett v. M & G Polymers and focuses, in particular, on the ostensibly odd silence with respect to a critical contract term — whether the parties in fact agreed that these benefits were vested. Although the union in Tackett insisted these welfare benefits were clearly intended to vest and the employer now asserts they can be modified at any time, the collective bargaining agreement and supporting documents are ambiguous on this question. This paper examines how and why this “silence” persisted for so many decades and concludes …
Can Consumer-Choice Plans Satisfy Patients? Problems With Theory And Practice In Health Insurance Contracts, Wendy K. Mariner
Can Consumer-Choice Plans Satisfy Patients? Problems With Theory And Practice In Health Insurance Contracts, Wendy K. Mariner
Faculty Scholarship
Much scholarship has considered whether health care - and insurance - should be distributed by voluntary contract or subject to government standards or regulation. Contracts will likely play a key distributive role in any future health care system. Yet we do not fully understand where private contracting does and does not work to further the goals of equitable access to affordable care. This article examines the role of health insurance policies in defining and enforcing access to medical care, focusing on private employment-based group health benefit plans. It describes models of consumer choice health plans and critiques their capacity for …