Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Foreword, Kelly Dineen

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

The Medicalization Of End-Of-Life Care: The Role Of Health Professions Education, Philip Fung, Miguel Paniagua

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

In the past 100 years, the advances in medical science and technology have shaped the health care delivery system in remarkable ways. The side effect of these advances has been a tendency to dehumanize the dying process, and consequently it has led to the rise of a specialty focused merely on bridging this gap in care. The public’s expectations of our legal, licensing, and medical education systems have also reflected this evolution in health care.

Making Sense Of Family Communication About And At The End Of Life: Family Communication Around End-Of-Life Planning And Decision Making, April R. Trees, Jennifer E. Ohs

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Families faced with end-of-life (EOL) decisions on behalf of a family member are charged with honoring a care recipient’s wishes, which may or may not be clear to them. The process of decision making is challenging for surrogate decision makers and their families, and it often results in suboptimal decisions that fail to meet the best interests of the patients, cause stress for family members, and burden the legal and medical systems. Effective family communication, something that legal representatives, medical professionals, and social workers are often in positions to influence, can enhance the quality of EOL care planning and decisions. …

Is There A Moral Obligation For Health Care Organizations To Develop Robust Advance Care Planning Programs?, Thomas D. Harter

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Advance care planning (ACP) has become an integral part of patient care because of its ability to help guide treatment decision making for individuals in need of medical care but who have lost the ability to communicate—temporarily or permanently—due to illness or injury. Not all persons have the same treatment threshold; some persons value their lives above all else and will accept a high level of physical debility regardless of personal discomfort to stay alive. Others value their individual personal comfort over the length of their lives and will refuse otherwise life-sustaining treatment if they believe the treatment will cause …

Give Me Liberty To Choose (A Better) Death: Respecting Autonomy More Fully In Advance Directive Statutes, Kathy L. Cerminara, Joseph R. Kadis

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

In the name of state interests, advance directive statutes almost universally include language requiring that a patient be in a particular physical state as a condition precedent to operation of a directive. This article urges state legislatures to recognize and rectify the conflict they have created by imposing such triggering conditions. First, it examines states’ efforts to facilitate autonomous end-of-life decision making through advance directive statutes. Then it proposes amending those statutes to align the law with medical ethics by eliminating specified physical triggering conditions burdening the exercise of patients’ rights to refuse life-sustaining treatment. Such amendment will improve end-of-life …

Procedural Due Process And Intramural Hospital Dispute Resolution Mechanisms: The Texas Advance Directives Act, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Increasingly, clinicians and commentators have been calling for the establishment of special adjudicatory dispute resolution mechanisms to resolve intractable medical futility disputes. As a leading model to follow, policymakers both around the United States and around the world have been looking to the conflict resolution provisions in the 1999 Texas Advance Directives Act (TADA).

In this article, I provide a complete and thorough review of the purpose, history, and operation of TADA. I conclude that TADA is a commendable attempt to balance the competing goals of efficiency and fairness in the resolution of these time-sensitive, life-and-death conflicts. But TADA is …

Dying Fast: Suicide In Individuals With Gambling Disorder, Stacey A. Tovino

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

These published remarks carefully document the history of health insurance coverage of gambling disorder. They begin by providing examples of gambling disorder insurance benefit disparities in the contexts of public health care programs and private health plans. They proceed by reviewing the effect of three pieces of legislation, including the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996, the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, and the Affordable Care Act of 2010, on public and private insurance coverage of gambling disorder. They highlight the partial victory that will occur in some states beginning in …

Celebrating The Distinguished, Humble, And Joyous Career Of Professor Jesse Goldner, Robert Gatter

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Adding Insult To Injury: How The Aca’S “Fix” For Nursing Home Compare Staffing Data Misses The Mark, Elizabeth J. Tucker

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

The Baby Boomers are aging, and soon many will require more long-term health care services, looking to the Nursing Home Compare Website (Website) to help guide their choices. The staffing rating on the Website, which rates nursing homes on a scale of one to five, uses a biased formula to generate its ratings. It counts registered nurses twice, completely excludes other important care staff, and uses outdated case-mix adjustments left over from the early 1990’s. In light of the pressing need for accurate data but no mechanism to obtain it, the staffing rating must be eliminated from the Website. Some …

Antitrust Enforcement Against Pharmaceutical Product Hopping: Protecting Consumers Or Reaching Too Far?, Tyler J. Klein

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

Pharmaceutical drugs are the backbone of modern medicine, which makes the continued development of new drugs essential and puts many lives in the hands of the brand-name pharmaceutical companies that develop these new treatments. Currently, antitrust litigation is being used to strike a balance between the innovator’s right to earn a profit and the need for generic drug companies to make these drugs available to the masses that need them. Antitrust law stops brand-name companies from taking over the market and excluding generics, but it should not be used to impose harsh remedies that restrict the thing that we all …

Health Care And The Myth Of Self-Reliance, Nicole Huberfeld, Jessica L. Roberts

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

King v. Burwell asked the Supreme Court to decide if, in providing assistance to purchase insurance “through an Exchange established by the State,” Congress meant to subsidize policies bought on the federally run exchange. With its ruling, the Court saved the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s low-income subsidy. But King is only part of a longer, more complex story about health care access for the poor. In a move toward universal coverage, two pillars of the ACA facilitate health insurance coverage for low-income Americans, one private and one public: (1) the subsidy and (2) Medicaid expansion. Although both have …

Case No. 2 - Preventable Maternal Death Due To Hemorrhage, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Preventable Maternal Death Due to Hemorrhage

Case No. 4 - Anoxic Encephalopathy Associated With A "High Spinal" Affect During Cesarean Delivery, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Anoxic Encephalopathy Associated with a "High Spinal" Affect during Cesarean Delivery

Case No. 1 - Anoxic Encephalopathy In A 7 Year Old Experiencing Hemorrhagic Shock Following Liver Biopsy, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Anoxic Encephalopathy in a 7 year old Experiencing Hemorrhagic Shock following Liver Biopsy

Case No. 3 - Anoxic Encephalopathy In 3 Year Old With A Cardiac Arrest During Orthopedic Surgery Under General Anesthesia For A Broken Elbow, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Anoxic Encephalopathy in 3 year old with a Cardiac Arrest During Orthopedic Surgery under General Anesthesia for a Broken Elbow

Case No. 10 - Post Cardiac Bypass Tamponade Producing Cardiac Arrest And Brain Damage, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Post Cardiac Bypass Tamponade Producing Cardiac Arrest and Brain Damage

Case No. 9 - Death Following Iatrogenic Bowel Perforation After Endoscopic G.I. Procedures, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Death following Iatrogenic Bowel Perforation after Endoscopic G.I. Procedures

Case No. 13 - Delay In Diagnosing A Left Breast Malignant Tumor That Was 7 X 9 Cm. At Diagnosis, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Delay in Diagnosing a Left Breast Malignant Tumor that was 7 x 9 cm. at Diagnosis

Case No. 11 - Respiratory And Cardiac Arrest At 3 Weeks Of Age In A Very Premature Neonate Occurring In The Nicu, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Respiratory and Cardiac Arrest at 3 Weeks of age in a very Premature Neonate Occurring in the NICU

Case No. 6 - Perinatal Complications With Eclampsia, New York Law School

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Cases

Anonymous Closed Medical Liability Case - Perinatal Complications with Eclampsia