Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Medical Rights For Same-Sex Couples And Rainbow Families, Anisa Mohanty

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

The present state of the law regarding medical rights for same-sex couples and their families is highly inconsistent. A handful of states permit same-sex marriage. Another handful of states recognize samesex marriages from other states, allow civil unions with state-level spousal rights for same-sex couples, or extend some or nearly all statelevel spousal rights to unmarried couples in domestic partnerships. With these widely disparate levels of recognition, it becomes difficult for same-sex couples to navigate their options and rights when a loved one-a partner or child-has a medical emergency or is in the hospital. In Part II, this Comment will …

Legal Preparedness For Pandemic Influenza: Is Virginia Ready, Kristen Digirolam

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

We cannot look at the legal issues of pandemic influenza in a vacuum. This paper attempts to identify the legal issues at stake during a pandemic and how those issues need to be discussed as a whole when preparing for a pandemic. Part II of this paper will give a brief description of pandemic influenza and look at the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Part III will examine the origins of legal authority during a pandemic at the federal, state, and local levels of government. Part IV will look at some of the specific legal issues that may arise during …

Jamming The Revolving Door: Legislative Setbacks For Mental Health Court Systems In Virginia, Sheila Moheb

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

Proponents of MHCs assert that alternative court systems will provide efficient jail diversion programs and reduce the number of individuals with mental illness in the criminal justice system by directing them to appropriate community treatment facilities. At the same time, MHCs must serve as only one branch of a larger, cohesive community effort to deter individuals with mental illness from incarceration, if not from conviction. Both advocates and adversaries of MHCs remain wary of the potential misuse of mental health courts, which may subject people with mental illness to greater criminalization or lead to greater fragmentation of the mental health …

What Scribner Wrought: How The Invention Of Modern Dialysis Shaped Health Law And Policy, Sallie Thieme Sanford [email protected]

Articles

In March 1960, Clyde Shields, a machinist dying from incurable kidney disease, was connected to an "artificial kidney" by means of a U-shaped Teflon tube that came to be known as the Scribner shunt. By facilitating long-term dialysis, Dr. Belding Scriber’s invention changed chronic kidney failure from a fatal illness to a treatable condition. This medical advance has, in turn, had a profound impact on key areas of health law and policy. This paper focuses on the historical roots and current context of three interrelated areas: ethical allocation of scarce medical resources; public financing of expensive health care; and decisions …

Redressing The Unconscionable Health Gap: A Global Plan For Justice, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Consider two children—one born in sub-Saharan Africa and the other in the United States. The African child is twenty-five times more likely to die in the first five years of life; if she lives to child-bearing age, she is a two hundred times more likely to die in labor; and overall, she will die thirty years earlier than the American child. The international community is deeply resistant to taking bold remedial action—more concerned with their geostrategic interests than the health of the poor. The scale of foreign aid is both insufficient and unsustainable and fails to address the key determinants …

Health Care Reform In Transition: Incremental Insurance Reform Without An Individual Mandate, Lawrence O. Gostin, Elenora E. Connors

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A major access problem exists in the private insurance market for individuals with preexisting conditions, who are either denied coverage or charged exorbitant premiums. In effect, individuals are denied coverage for exactly what they need, which jeopardizes their health and the financial security of their family. Before health reform passed, discussions surrounding incremental reform took place, including perhaps the most politically compelling – prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to those with preexisting health conditions. Insurance is based upon the principles of spreading risk of individuals across a population to ensure that everyone can afford medical care when he or she …

Health Care Reform — A Historic Moment In Us Social Policy, Lawrence O. Gostin, Elenora E. Connors

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the first U.S. comprehensive health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). After almost a century of failed attempts, the U.S. now has a national health care system which promises to increase access to care, increase consumer choice, and ban insurance discrimination for individuals with preexisting medical conditions. The PPACA is expected to expand insurance coverage to 32 million individuals by 2019 through a variety of measures. At a cost of $938 billion over 10 years, the PPACA is projected to reduce the deficit by $143 billion …

Restoring Health To Health Reform, Lawrence O. Gostin, Peter D. Jacobson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, we discuss the public health provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA--P.L. 111-148). We first set forth a framework to identify the key reforms that are needed for a robust public health system. These include workforce and infrastructure investments. We then assess the PPACA against these criteria. We conclude that although the act would make significant investment in public health (especially in wellness and prevention programs), it does little to improve the existing structural deficiencies that the public health system must overcome if it is to be effective in improving the population’s health.

The President’S Global Health Initiative, Lawrence O. Gostin, Emily A. Mok

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The U.S. Global Health Initiative (GHI) represents the Obama administration’s new strategy for international development assistance in health. With a pledge of $63 billion over six years, GHI aims to fund PEPFAR and a set of broader global health issues (e.g., maternal and child health, nutrition, and neglected tropical diseases). GHI is also being framed as “smart power” whereby health would serve as a critical tool for U.S. foreign policy.

However, as the U.S. enters a period of severe budgetary restraint and as domestic crises rise to the fore, the promise of global health reform could become illusory. The lack …

The National Individual Health Insurance Mandate: Ethics And The Constitution, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Within weeks, after signing the nation’s first comprehensive health insurance reform, twenty states filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Bill’s most politically charged feature—an individual purchase mandate. If anything, the tax penalty is too low compared with the cost of insurance, so it may not sufficiently incentivize healthy individuals. But it remains deeply controversial because it compels individuals to purchase coverage they choose not to have, raising the question whether Congress can lawfully and ethically require individuals to contract with, and transfer money to, a private party. To be sure, the individual mandate lacks a clear American precedent. (It …

Commandeering The People: Why The Individual Health Insurance Mandate Is Unconstitutional, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” includes what is called an “individual responsibility requirement” or mandate that all persons buy health insurance from a private company and a separate “penalty” enforcing this requirement. In this paper, I do not critique the individual mandate on originalist grounds. Instead, I explain why the individual mandate is unconstitutional under the existing doctrine by which the Supreme Court construes the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses and the tax power. There are three principal claims.

First (Part II), since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has developed a doctrine allowing the regulation of …

Conceivable Changes: Effectuating Infertile Couples' Emotional Ties To Frozen Embryos Through New Disposition Options, Jody L. Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Implementing Public Health Regulations In Developing Countries: Lessons From The Oecd Countries, Lawrence O. Gostin, Emily A. Mok, Monica Das Gupta, Max Levin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The enforcement of public health standards is a common problem in many developing countries. Public health agencies lack sufficient resources and, too often, enforcement mechanisms rely on slow and erratic judicial systems. These limitations can make traditional public health regulations difficult to implement. In this article, we examine innovative approaches to the implementation of public health regulations that have emerged in recent years within OECD countries. These approaches aim to improve compliance with health standards, while reducing dependence on both the legal system and the administrative resources of public health agencies.

This article begins by discussing some traditional forms of …

National And Global Responsibilities For Health, Lawrence O. Gostin, Mark Heywood, Gorik Ooms, Anand Grover, John-Arne Røttingen, Wang Chenguang

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Preventable and treatable injuries and diseases are overwhelming sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and other impoverished areas of the world. Why are health outcomes among the world’s poor so dire after the first decade of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and despite a quadrupling of international health assistance over the past two decades? We believe that this dynamic can change by establishing clearer understandings of, and forging consensus around and governance structures to support, national and global responsibilities to improve global health.

With the goal of a new post-MDG global health paradigm, we are establishing the Joint Action and Learning …

Rights Talk And Patient Subjectivity: The Role Of Autonomy, Equality And Participation Norms, Nan D. Hunter

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Patients themselves have transformed the role of the patient in the health care system, making it far more complex than it ever has been before. As a result, the conceptual root of our contemporary understandings of “patient” is an assumption of autonomous subjectivity, i.e., of an individual aware of and capable of acting on her choices for medical care. The Symposium on Patient-Centered Health Law and Ethics of which this Article is a part considers the most recent stage in this evolution of meanings: the concept of patient-centeredness, with its implication of provider deference to the patient’s perspective. Throughout the …

The United States' Engagement In Global Tobacco Control: Proposals For Comprehensive Funding And Strategies, Thomas J. Bollyky, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Tobacco use kills more people annually than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Unless action is taken, tobacco-related diseases will kill hundreds of millions more in coming decades, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. Beyond its effects on morbidity and mortality, tobacco use has dramatic social and economic consequences, consuming healthcare budgets, robbing families of their primary wage earners, and hindering economic development. Tobacco consumption is shifting from industrialized to developing countries, spurred by rising incomes, trade liberalization, and intensive marketing.

Although Congress empowered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco domestically, the United States has failed to lead …

International Assistance And Cooperation For Access To Essential Medicines, Emily A. Mok

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Access to essential medicines is a critical problem that plagues many developing countries. With a daunting number of domestic constraints technologically, economically, and otherwise developing countries are faced with a steep uphill battle to meet the human rights obligation of providing essential medicines immediately. To meet these challenges, the international human rights obligations of international assistance and cooperation can play a key role to help developing countries fulfill the need for access to essential medicines. This article seeks to highlight and expand upon the current understanding of international assistance and cooperation for access to essential medicines through a review of …

Allocating Liability For Deficient Warnings On Generic Drugs: A Prescription For Change, Sarah C. Duncan

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Brand-name pharmaceutical companies create pioneer drugs that cure diseases around the world. However, because research and development costs are very high, brand-name drugs are expensive. In response to escalating costs, Congress enacted the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act of 1984 ("Hatch-Waxman Act") to promote generic competition. As generics become more prominent in the pharmaceutical marketplace, individuals injured by generic drugs are suing the manufacturers with more frequency. The cases often turn on which company should bear the liability for failing to warn--the brand-name manufacturer or the generic drug maker. Although the injured person took the generic drug, …

Negotiating Equitable Access To Influenza Vaccines: Global Health Diplomacy And The Controversies Surrounding Avian Influenza H5n1 And Pandemic Influenza H1n1, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Land Use And Water Supply, Susan Kelly, Joanne Hilton

Water Matters!

As New Mexico grows and develops, there is a continuing increase in water demand and the need to provide additional supplies. Recent studies estimate the current population of the State to be about two million people, and the population is expected to grow to approximately 3,400,000 by 2050. Regional water plans project water demands for 16 regions within New Mexico. The total projected new water use associated with population growth—the public water supply and associated commercial sectors, exclusive of agriculture, mining, or other industries—ranges from 280,000 to 380,000 acre-feet per year of new water supply needed in the next 40 …