Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Rethinking Body Property, Kara W. Swanson

Florida State University Law Review

Body products, including blood, gametes, and kidneys, are a routine part of contemporary medicine. They are also controversial. There is a strong preference for donated gifts, based on an intuition that gifts are pure, altruistic, and healthy, and that purchased products (commodities) are tainted, exploitative, and dangerous. Law and policy reflect this dichotomy, preventing market exchanges either by declaring body products non-property or banning sales by the supplying body. Yet with growing scarcity leading to injustice in the allocation and harvesting of body products, calls to allow sales have been increasing, motivating proposals to increase supplies by compensating bone marrow …

Spread Too Thin: The Case For Federally Mandated Minimum Nurse-To-Patient Ratios In Hospitals, Katelyn Kuwata

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Emergency Medical Services And Public Policy In Durban, Kwazulu-Natal, John Buyske

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This project seeks to explore the realities of the emergency medical system in the Durban area, particularly relative to government policy. It contextualizes its findings within the literature on public policy. Data for the project was collected via nine in-depth interviews with various professionals working in the field of emergency medical services, as well as a survey of fourteen citizens conducted in the peri-urban township of Cato Manor. This data was analyzed using qualitative methods. While every participant had different views and a different perspective on emergency services, some recurring themes and trends became evident, allowing for conclusions to be …

Black Health Matters: Disparities, Community Health, And Interest Convergence, Mary Crossley

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Health disparities represent a significant strand in the fabric of racial injustice in the United States, one that has proven exceptionally durable. Many millions of dollars have been invested in addressing racial disparities over the past three decades. Researchers have identified disparities, unpacked their causes, and tracked their trajectories, with only limited progress in narrowing the health gap between whites and racial and ethnic minorities. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the movement toward value-based payment methods for health care may supply a new avenue for addressing disparities. This Article argues that the ACA’s requirement that tax-exempt …

The American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Mental Health Standards: Revisions For The Twenty-First Century, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In 1981, the American Bar Association ("ABA"), bolstered by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, decided to develop standards for governing the involvement of persons with mental disabilities in the criminal justice system. To accomplish this task the ABA established six task forces, each focused on a different topic, and each composed of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law professors, and mental health professionals well-known for their expertise about criminal mental health law. The result, promulgated in 1984 by the ABA's House of Delegates, was more than eighty black letter Criminal Justice Mental Health Standards, accompanied …

Body Of Preemption: Health Law Traditions And The Presumption Against Preemption, Elizabeth Mccuskey

Faculty Scholarship

Preemption plays a prominent role in health law, establishing the contours of coexistence for federal and state regulatory authorities over health topics as varied as medical malpractice, insurance coverage, drug safety, and privacy. When courts adjudicate crucial preemption questions, they must divine Congress's intent by applying substantive canons of statutory interpretation, including presumptions against preemption.

This Article makes three main contributions to health law and preemption doctrine. First, it identifies a variant of the presumption against preemption that applies to health laws-referred to throughout as the "tradition presumption." Unlike the general presumption against preemption on federalism grounds, courts base this …

Alienage Classifications And The Denial Of Health Care To Dreamers, Fatma E. Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

In the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), passed in 2010, Congress provided that only “lawfully present” individuals could obtain insurance through the Marketplaces established under the Act. Congress left it to the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) to define who is “lawfully present.” Initially, HHS included all individuals with deferred action status, which is an authorized period of stay but not a legal status. After President Obama announced a new policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) in June 2012, however, HHS amended its regulation specifically to exclude DACA recipients from the definition of “lawfully present.” The revised …

The Future Of Health Law: How Can Law Meet Emerging Health Challenges?, Colleen M. Flood, Lorian Hardcastle

Dalhousie Law Journal

Canadians have often prided themselves on having one of the best health-care systems in the world, but in recent years our system has fallen to the bottom of relevant international comparisons. Incremental attempts to improve the system have not resulted in significant improvements and the reality is that our most pressing challenges can be addressed only through ambitious, systemic reforms. For example, it is well established that Canada's patchwork scheme for providing long-term care will not scale to meet growing needs as a quarter ofthe population enters retirement age over the next two decades.' As yet further examples, the Canadian …

And Miles To Go Before I Sleep: The Future Of End-Of-Life Law And Policy In Canada, Jocelyn Downie

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper reviews the legal status of a number ofend-of-life law and policy issues that have, to date, been overshadowed by debates about medical assistance in dying. It suggests that law reform is needed in relation to palliative sedation without artificial hydration and nutrition, advance directives for the withholding and withdrawal of oral hydration and nutrition, unilateral withholding and withdrawal of potentially life-sustaining treatment, and the determination of death. To leave the law in its current uncertain state is to leavepatients vulnerable to having no access to interventions that they want or at the other extreme, being forced to receive …

Cross-Cultural Dynamics In Palliative Care: The Emerging Canadian Scenario, Chidi Oguamanam

Dalhousie Law Journal

As modern technologies leverage medical sciences, life expectancy is on the rise in Canada, and indeed globally with a remarkable increase in the elderly population in need of health care. The same is true of the diversity of cultural groups who are now patrons and stakeholders in Canada's health care landscape. An emergent feature ofthis landscape is the complexity ofcontexts for negotiating and mediating medical care delivery at the end of life. This paper examines the gaps in regulatory and legal interventions as well as the gaps and opportunities to negotiate the transition to palliative care in cross-cultural contexts that …

A Goal-Oriented Understanding Of The Right To Health Care And Its Implications For Future Health Rights Litigation, Michael Da Silva

Dalhousie Law Journal

International human rights law recognizes a right to health. A majority of domestic constitutions recognize health-related rights. Many citizens believe that they have a moral right to health care. Some theorists agree. Yet the idea of a right to health care remains controversial. Specifying the nature of such a right invites more controversy. Indeed, most models of the right face persistent problems that threaten to undermine the conceptual coherence of a right to health care. This article accordingly sketches preliminary arguments for a new, goal-oriented model of the right to health care. It explains that the model avoids most of …

Modernizing The Canada Health Act, Colleen M. Flood, Bryan Thomas

Dalhousie Law Journal

The Canada Health Act (CHA) was adopted in 1984, to shore up a health-care system conceptualized in the 1960s. Under the CHA, universal coverage is limited to "medicallynecessary" hospital and physician services, to the exclusion of vital goods and services such as outpatient pharmaceuticals, dental care, long-term care, and many mental health services. Inequities resulting from these gaps in public coverage are partly to blame for pushing Canada's health system to the bottom ofrecent international rankings. But there is more to modernizing Canada s health care system, we argue, than filling these gaps in universal coverage. Every major health system …

A Consumer Protection Perspective On Regulation For Healthier Eating, Barbara Von Tigerstrom

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article explores the potential for a consumer protection perspective to complement public health approaches in designing and justifying laws that aim to promote healthier eating, such as food labelling regulations or restrictions on marketing and advertising. Consumer protection and public health are distinct perspectives, but they share the goal of protecting health and both accept the need for regulation to protect important interests. Consumer protection objectives could be used to defend public health measures that are challenged as infringing rights or restricting trade. Insights from consumer law and scholarship could also contribute to discussions about when regulatory intervention to …

Imagining Global Health With Justice, Lawrence O. Gostin

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article offers a way to achieve global health with justice as a global health imperative. It is possible to have global health without justice, meaning that improvements in health outcomes could be achieved, but without a fair distribution of the benefits of good health. It is also possible to have justice without global health, where health outcomes are evenly distributed across the population but overall health is not improved. With this understanding, this article challenges current ways of understanding global health, and argues that absolute reductions in morbidity and premature mortality are not robust indicators of success in the …

Informing The Future Of End-Of-Life Care In Canada: Lessons From The Quebec Legislative Experience, Michelle Giroux

Dalhousie Law Journal

There have been numerous and challenging developments respecting endof-life care in Canada. In Quebec, political consensus and changes in public opinion led to the adoption of end-of-life care legislation. This paper discusses the context and foundation of that reform and reviews its content with the objective of informing the future of end-of-life care in Canada. In the first part of the paper I explore the balancing of the right to life and autonomy, with a focus on the approach chosen in Quebec by the Legal Experts Panel Report. In Part 11, I discuss Quebec's adoption of An Act Respecting End-of-Life …

Zika Virus And Global Health Security, Lawrence O. Gostin, James G. Hodge Jr.

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Americans are largely apathetic about the risks of Zika virus and Congress cannot agree on preparedness funding. Strategies to counter the spread of Zika by the World Health Organisation (WHO) grossly underestimate the disease’s impact. WHO and member countries lack sufficient resources to respond. Consequences of fiscal apathy can be measured in lives lost and long-term disabilities. Zika prevention is a matter of global health security.

The epidemiologic brunt of Zika in South America falls largely on vulnerable women at heightened risk of exposure through mosquitoes and sexual transmission. Resulting transmission to fetuses and infants will have generational impacts in …

Financial Hardship From Purchasing Medications For Senior Citizens Before And After The Medicare Modernization Act Of 2003 And The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act Of 2010: Findings From 1998, 2001, And 2015, Anthony W. Olson, Jon C. Schommer, David A. Mott, Lawrence M. Brown

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

BACKGROUND: The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (Medicare Part D) added prescription drug coverage for senior citizens aged 65 years and older and applied managed care approaches to contain costs. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) had the goals of expanding health care insurance coverage and slowing growth in health care expenditures.

OBJECTIVES: To (a) describe the proportion of senior citizens who had prescription drug insurance coverage and the proportion who experienced financial hardship from purchasing medications in 2015, and (b) compare the findings with those collected in 1998 and 2001.

METHODS: Data were obtained in …

Ebola, Experimental Medicine, Economics, And Ethics: An Evaluation Of International Disease Outbreak Law, Sara L. Dominey

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Fulfilling The Promise Of Roe: A Pathway For Meaningful Pre-Abortion Consultation, Thomas J. Molony

Catholic University Law Review

In Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down regulations that it believed would inhibit a woman’s ability to receive meaningful personal consultation and support before choosing to have an abortion. The Court thus echoed what it had emphasized in Roe v. Wade more than 40 years earlier—that an abortion decision would follow an extensive discussion between a woman and her physician. An ob/gyn who provides a woman with regular care likely is best equipped to offer this type of consultation, but most ob/gyns do not perform abortions, and there is evidence that physicians who perform …

Marine Law Symposium: Legal And Policy Approaches To Reduce Marine Debris In New England 11/04/2016, Roger Wiliams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.