Health Courts: The Latest Fad or the Answer to Medical Liability Reform?

When I discuss tort reform in my health law class, I usually start with the following: if tort reform is the answer, what is the question? As I suggested in an earlier post, there’s little agreement on which tort reform policy measures to implement. Despite some excellent recent empirical scholarship from Professors Hyman, Black, Silver, [...]

Can Health Reform Include Malpractice Reform? Sure, But Which Reforms Can Generate Political Agreement?

With the exception of the ludicrous death panel accusations, it’s hard to find an area of health policy that is subject to more demagoguery than the ongoing debate about medical liability. The level of distortion and the amount of misinformation (i.e., outright falsehoods) has all but obliterated any chance for a reasoned debate. In an [...]

Legal Issues in Health Reform Symposium

Please join the O’Neill Institute for our symposium, “State of the Debate: Legal Issues in Health Reform,” on October 26, 2009. “Legal Solutions in Health Reform” is a project of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  The project, an extensive analysis [...]

ERISA Preemption and Health Reform: Should the Department of Justice Switch Sides?

In my article on ERISA preemption for the O’Neill Institute’s Legal Solutions in Health Reform, I argued that pay-or-play initiatives, such as those enacted in Maryland, San Francisco, and Massachusetts, are vulnerable to an ERISA preemption challenge.  Two Circuit Court opinions present the issue directly.  The 4th Circuit overturned the Maryland law based on ERISA [...]