Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2006-Winter 2007

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Summer 2006

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

The Three Faces Of Retainer Care, Frank A. Pasquale

ExpressO

Retainer care arrangements allow patients to pay a fee directly to a physician’s office in order to obtain special access to care. Practices usually convert to retainer status by concentrating their attention on a small panel and dropping the majority of their patients. Proponents call retainer care a triumph of consumer-directed health care; opponents deride it as “boutique medicine.” Both sides are deploying a variety of legal tactics in order to attain their goals.

After surveying these conflicts, this article clarifies what is at stake by analyzing the three key features of retainer care: preventive care, queue-jumping, and amenity-bundling. Most …

Racially-Tailored’ Medicine Unraveled, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

In June 2005, the FDA approved BiDil, a heart failure medication that is labeled for use only by African-Americans and thus is the first treatment of its kind. The drug likely portends a future of growing interest in "race-based" medicine. This phenomenon is emerging at the same time that scientists, in light of the Human Genome Project, are reaching an understanding that "race" has no biological meaning, and consequently, "racially-tailored" medicine is both puzzling and troubling.

This Article explores the reasons for the new focus on "racial-profiling" in medicine. It analyzes the risks and dangers of this approach, including medical …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2005-Winter 2006

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Blame Canada (And The Rest Of The World): The Twenty-Year War On Imported Prescription Drugs, Daniel L. Pollock

ExpressO

Rising budget deficits and sticker shock over the new Medicare drug benefit have put the issue of prescription drug costs back into the spotlight. The growth in the cost of prescription drugs continues to represent a staggering burden for taxpayer-funded health care programs, even while costs of non-drug health care services have slowed or even decreased. Among the many proposals for cutting prescription drug costs, drug importation is unique. Although bipartisan support for drug importation has existed in Congress for over five years, the federal government continues to maintain that a system of safe and effective drug importation is impossible. …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Summer 2005

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2005

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Law And Public Health: Beyond Emergency Preparedness, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines three questions: What is public health? What is public health law? What roles can lawyers play in public health? It first describes the breadth of public health, highlighting six trends shaping its future: social determinants of health; synergy between medicine and public health; shifts in focus from external (e.g., environmental and social) to internal (behavioral) risks to health; federalization of public health law; globalization of health risks and responses; and bioterrorism. Because the domains of law that apply to public health are equally broad, the Article next offers a conceptual framework for identifying the types of laws …

"Racially-Tailored" Medicine Unraveled, Sharona Hoffman

American University Law Review

In June 2005, the FDA approved BiDil, a heart failure medication that is labeled for use only by African-Americans and thus is the first treatment of its kind. The drug likely portends a future of growing interest in "race-based" medicine. This phenomenon is emerging at the same time that scientists, in light of the Human Genome Project, are reaching an understanding that "race" has no biological meaning, and consequently, "racially-tailored" medicine is both puzzling and troubling. This Article explores the reasons for the new focus on "racial-profiling" in medicine. It analyzes the risks and dangers of this approach, including medical …

Preparing The Groundwork For A Responsible Debate On Stem Cell Research And Human Cloning, O. Carter Snead

Journal Articles

The debate over both cloning and stem cell research has been intense and polarizing. It played a significant role in the recently completed presidential campaign, mentioned by both candidates on the stump, at both parties' conventions, and was even taken up directly during one of the presidential debates. The topic has been discussed and debated almost continuously by the members of the legal, scientific, medical, and public policy commentariat. I believe that it is a heartening tribute to our national polity that such a complex moral, ethical, and scientific issue has become a central focus of our political discourse. But, …

Hospital Chaplaincy Under The Hipaa Privacy Rule: Health Care Or "Just Visiting The Sick?", Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Approximately seventy-nine percent of Americans believe that praying can help people recover from illness, injury or disease, and nearly seventy-seven percent of American patients would like spiritual issues discussed as part of their care. Despite Americans' strong beliefs in the health-related benefits of religious and spiritual practices and traditions, the preamble to the federal Department of Health and Human Services' ("HHS") health information privacy rule (the "Privacy Rule") explains that health care "does not include methods of healing that are solely spiritual" (the "preamble"). The preamble concludes that, "clergy or other religious practitioners that provide solely religious healing services are …

I Want To Live: Medicine Betrayed By Ideology In The Political Debate Over Terri Schaivo, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The public's view of the political intrusion into the medical care of Theresa Marie Schiavo is well illustrated by two political cartoons. The first, by Tony Auth, reprinted in the Boston Globe shortly after Congress passed a law authorizing intervention by the federal courts, pictures a horde of congressmen charging mindlessly out of the Capitol, all dressed as physicians-one carrying a saw, another an I.V. pole-with the caption, "Coming Soon to a Sickbed Near You . .. [tihe United States Congress." The second, by Tom Toles, published in the Washington Post shortly after the results of the autopsy report were …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2004

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Summer 2004

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Be Not Afraid Of Change: Time To Eliminate The Corporate Practice Of Medicine Doctrine, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine is a physician-centric, guild type doctrine that is misplaced in the present incarnation of the American healthcare system and that does nothing to improve quality, efficiency, or accountability. The paper focuses on three key reasons that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine should be laid to rest. First, the motives for creating the corporate practice of medicine doctrine are long gone, as physicians have not been able to operate as a guild of autonomous providers of healthcare for quite some time. Second, it is disingenuous to pretend that physicians are …

Be Not Afraid Of Change: Time To Eliminate The Corporate Practice Of Medicine Doctrine, Nicole Huberfeld

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article focuses on three key reasons that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine should be laid to rest. First, the motives for creating the corporate practice of medicine doctrine are long gone; it has been some time since physicians have been able to operate as a guild of autonomous providers of health care. The delivery and financing of health care places physicians in an integrated system that is only frustrated by the corporate practice of medicine doctrine. Second, it is disingenuous to pretend that physicians are not influenced by financial gain. This is handily evidenced by the federal and …

Not So Peaceful Coexistence: Inherent Tensions In Addressing Tort Law Reform, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

As Professor Michael Green's comments trenchantly remind us, all of this has a familiar ring: insurers and tort defendants claim unfairly escalating liability, plaintiffs' lawyers and consumer groups counterattack, and (for the most part), insurers and defendants obtain some of the relief they seek. The tort reform victories are not so overwhelming as to completely unravel the historical rights of victims or the power of courts generally, but some constriction of rights inevitably occurs. During periods of quiescence, plaintiffs and consumers take back some lost territory through common law victories expanding claimant rights, or through specific legislation. Statutes that permitted …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Summer 2003

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2003

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Regulating Clinical Research: Informed Consent, Privacy, And Irbs, Sharona Hoffman

Faculty Publications

During the past two decades, the United States has experienced dramatic developments in the area of biomedical research. Expanding budgets, augmented computer capabilities, and the Human Genome Project have all significantly enhanced research capabilities. Consequently, the number of research projects conducted in this country is ever growing, and the enrollment of an adequate number of human subjects is becoming an increasingly challenging task.

Clinical research involving human participants is governed by federal regulations that have been promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In light of the proliferation of medical …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2002

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall-Winter 2001

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Summer 2001

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Spring 2001

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Trusting Doctors: Tricky Business When It Comes To Clinical Research, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the troublesome ethical dilemmas arising out of physician conflicts of interest in the context of research on human beings. It focuses on the inevitable conflict between the objectives of clinical investigators and those of their human subjects to illuminate subtle divergences of interest in doctor-patient relationships that patients often do not recognize - or want to believe. Once perceived, however, these potentially corroding conflicts can stun research subjects and their families, and leave them feeling deeply betrayed by their clinicians. The article concludes that a researcher's substantial financial conflicts constitute material information which, absent compelling circumstances, the …

The Intersection Of Law And Medicine Legal Ethics In Medicine: Foreword, Kathy L. Cerminara

St. Thomas Law Review

Foreword: The Intersection of Law and Medicine by Kathy L. Cerminara.

End-Of-Life Care In Florida: Should The Law Follow The Lobbyists Or The People's Wishes, Alison Cossetti

St. Thomas Law Review

One of the hottest topics on the minds and lips of many Floridians is end-of-life care. This is understandable since the state of Florida contains the largest percentage of elderly individuals, the third highest amount of people afflicted with the AIDS virus, and the fourth largest number of deaths per year from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease in the nation. The Florida Legislature realizes that the state is extremely diverse in the areas of ethnicity, race, cultural customs, and religious beliefs, and believes that a person's experience with death, the process of dying, and their choices pertaining to …

Advance Directives: Taking Control Of End-Of-Life Decisions, Anita Cava

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Law At The Limits Of Life: Lessons From Cannibalism, Euthanasia, Abortion, And The Court-Ordered Killing Of One Conjoined Twin To Save The Other, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The subject is law at the beginning and end of life. Most of my work is in the area of general health law: law and medicine, public health law, and health and human rights. But this is my favorite subject area, and I expect you to ask me the hardest questions you can. I am not saying I can answer them, but if I cannot that is my fault, not yours. I am going to make a pretty broad argument today about law and medicine; specifically about how new medical technology and medical practice standards have eclipsed religion (and sometimes …