Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Might Houses Of Worship Enable Currently Uninsured, Economically Disadvantaged Individuals To Obtain Affordable Health Care Insurance?, Nina J. Crimm

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

No abstract provided.

Adjusting The Benefits And Burdens Of Economic Life For The Public Good: The Aca's Medical Loss Ratio As A Constitutional Regulation Of Health Insurance Companies, Susanne Cordner

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

The Indefinite Quarantine: A Public Health Review Of Chronic Inconsistencies In Sexually Violent Predator Statutes, Isaac D. Buck

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article undertakes this public health review in five parts. Part I considers the general structure of SVP statutes, noting the reasoning behind the enactment and implementation of these statutes. Part II focuses the analysis on examples of three different types of SVP statutes' limiting criteria by considering SVP laws from New Jersey, Wisconsin, Virginia, and California. Part III compares the preventive detentions of SVP commitment and quarantine. Part IV applies quarantine principles to the SVP framework, and, after concluding that SVP statutes, as currently configured, do not sufficiently withstand this public health critique, Part V proposes solutions.

Medicare's Post-Acute Care Payment: An Updated Review Of The Issues And Policy Proposals, Sally Coberly

National Health Policy Forum

Medicare spending on post-acute care provided by home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, and long-term care hospitals accounted for about 10 percent of total program outlays in 2013. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and others have noted several long-standing problems with the payment systems for post-acute care and have suggested refinements to Medicare's post-acute care payment systems that are intended to encourage the delivery of appropriate care in the right setting for a patient's condition. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 contained several provisions that affect the Medicare program's post-acute care payment systems, as …

Newsletter Fall 2015

Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2015

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Law & Healthcare Newsletter, Vol. 23, No. 1, Fall 2015

Law & Health Care Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Dignifying Madness: Rethinking Commitment Law In An Age Of Mass Incarceration, Jonathan Simon, Stephen A. Rosenbaum

University of Miami Law Review

Modern nation-states have been trapped in recurring cycles of incarcerating and emancipating residents with psychiatric disabilities. New cycles of enthusiasm for incarceration generally commence with well-defined claims about the evils of allowing “the mad” to remain at liberty and the benefits incarceration would bring to the afflicted. A generation or two later, at most, reports of terrible conditions in institutions circulate and new laws follow, setting high burdens for those seeking to imprison and demanding exacting legal procedures with an emphasis on individual civil liberties. Today, we seem to be arriving at another turn in the familiar cycle. A growing …

When Biopharma Meets Software: Bioinformatics At The Patent Office, Saurabh Vishnubhakat, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have spilled much ink questioning patent quality. Complaints encompass concern about incoming applications, examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”), and the USPTO’s ultimate output. The literature and some empirical data also suggest, however, that applications, examination, and output may differ considerably based on technology. Most notably, although definitions of patent quality are contested, quality in the biopharmaceutical industry is often considered substantially higher than that in information and communications technology (ICT) industries.

This Article presents the first empirical examination of what happens when the two fields are combined. Specifically, it analyzes the creation and early history …

Trafficked? Aids, Criminal Law And The Politics Of Measurement, Aziza Ahmed

University of Miami Law Review

Since early in the HIV epidemic, epidemiologists identified individuals who transact sex as a high-risk group for contracting HIV. Where the issue of transacting sex has been framed as sex work, harm-reduction advocates and scholars call for decriminalization as a primary legal solution to address HIV. Where the issue is defined as trafficking, advocates known as abolitionists argue instead for the criminalization of the purchase of sex.

Global health governance institutions are porous to these competing ideas and ideologies. This article first historicizes the contestation between harm-reduction and abolition in global governance on health. The paper then turns to a …

Mandatory Process, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Indiana Law Journal

This Article suggests that people tend to undervalue their procedural rights—their proverbial “day in court”—until they are actually involved in a dispute. The Article argues that the inherent, outcome-independent value of participating in a dispute resolution process comes largely from its power to soothe a person’s grievance— their perception of unfairness and accompanying negative emotional reaction—win or lose. But a tendency to assume unchanging emotional states, known in behavioral economics as projection bias, can prevent people from anticipating that they might become aggrieved and from appreciating the grievance-soothing power of process. When this happens, people will waive their procedural rights …

Mandatory Process, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Faculty Scholarly Works

This Article suggests that people tend to undervalue their procedural rights—their proverbial “day in court”—until they are actually involved in a dispute. The Article argues that the inherent, outcome-independent value of participating in a dispute resolution process comes largely from its power to soothe a person’s grievance— their perception of unfairness and accompanying negative emotional reaction—win or lose. But a tendency to assume unchanging emotional states, known in behavioral economics as projection bias, can prevent people from anticipating that they might become aggrieved and from appreciating the grievance-soothing power of process. When this happens, people will waive their procedural rights …

Procedural Triage, Matthew J.B. Lawrence

Faculty Scholarly Works

Prior scholarship has assumed that the inherent value of a “day in court” is the same for all claimants, so that when procedural resources (like a jury trial or a hearing) are scarce, they should be rationed the same way for all claimants. That is incorrect. This Article shows that the inherent value of a “day in court” can be far greater for some claimants, such as first-time filers, than for others, such as corporate entities and that it can be both desirable and feasible to take this variation into account in doling out scarce procedural protections. In other words, …

Three Words And The Future Of The Affordable Care Act, Nicholas Bagley

Articles

As an essential part of its effort to achieve near universal coverage, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) extends sizable tax credits to most people who buy insurance on the newly established health care exchanges. Yet several lawsuits have been filed challenging the availability of those tax credits in the thirty-four states that refused to set up their own exchanges. The lawsuits are premised on a strained interpretation of the ACA that, if accepted, would make a hash of other provisions of the statute and undermine its effort to extend coverage to the uninsured. The courts should reject this latest effort …

Medicine As A Public Calling, Nicholas Bagley

Michigan Law Review

The debate over how to tame private medical spending tends to pit advocates of government-provided insurance—a single-payer scheme—against those who would prefer to harness market forces to hold down costs. When it is mentioned at all, the possibility of regulating the medical industry as a public utility is brusquely dismissed as anathema to the American regulatory tradition. This dismissiveness, however, rests on a failure to appreciate just how deeply the public utility model shaped health law in the twentieth century— and how it continues to shape health law today. Closer economic regulation of the medical industry may or may not …

Imagining Global Health With Justice: In Defense Of The Right To Health, Eric A. Friedman, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The singular message in Global Health Law is that we must strive to achieve global health with justice—improved population health, with a fairer distribution of benefits of good health. Global health entails ensuring the conditions of good health—public health, universal health coverage, and the social determinants of health—while justice requires closing today’s vast domestic and global health inequities. These conditions for good health should be incorporated into public policy, supplemented by specific actions to overcome barriers to equity.

A new global health treaty grounded in the right to health and aimed at health equity—a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH)—stands …

Funding The Costs Of Disease Outbreaks Caused By Non Vaccination, Robert L. Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

While vaccination rates in the United States are high – generally over 90 percent – rates of exemptions have been going up, and preventable diseases coming back. 2014 is shaping to be one of the worst years for measles since 1994, with outbreaks generally starting from unvaccinated individuals and affecting primarily the unvaccinated. While pertussis is a more complex story, communities with high rates of exemptions are more vulnerable to outbreaks. Aside from their human cost and the financial cost of treatment imposed on those who become ill, outbreaks impose financial costs on an already burdened public health system, diverting …

Challenges Of Forecasting Physician Workforce Needs Amid Delivery System Transformation, Rob Cunningham

National Health Policy Forum

As population growth and the aging of the overall population increase demand for health care, policymakers and analysts grapple with whether sufficient health care providers, particularly physicians, will be available to meet that demand. Some argue there are too few physicians already; others say our current supply-demand problems lie with efficiency. But suppose both are correct? Perhaps the real challenge is to understand how the provision of health care services is changing in response to market forces such as payment changes, patients' expectations, provider distributions, and technology innovations. This issue brief revisits what is known about evolving practice organizations, professional …

Revisiting Religious Freedom In Dordt V. Burwell, Donald Roth

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Posting about a recent opinion handed down from the United States Court of Appeals regarding the "contraceptive mandate", part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/revisiting-religious-freedom-in-dordt-v-burwell/

The Minty Taste Of Death: State And Local Options To Regulate Menthol In Tobacco Products, Michael Freiberg

Catholic University Law Review

Explaining why the additive menthol in tobacco products creates major public health risks, this article advocates for restricting the addition of menthol in cigarettes as a way to reduce smoking-related disease and death. Author Michael Freiberg describes how the decision to regulate menthol in tobacco products, on a federal level, was historically delegated by Congress to the discretion of the U.S. FDA, outlines the U.S. FDA’s subsequent failure to regulate menthol, and surveys state and local government efforts to regulate menthol in response to the FDA’s inaction. The article proposes additional actions that these state and local governments could take …