Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics

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No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Federal agencies count all fatalities prevented by regulation as having the same value for the purposes of cost-benefit analysis, making no adjustment for the age of the person saved. This uniform valuation is guided by empirical studies that find that the young are not willing to pay more than the elderly for small risk reductions in private markets. This Note argues for a different approach. It proposes that agencies take account of a previously ignored body of "public choice" research that finds that most individuals think government should adopt lifesaving programs that benefit the young over those that benefit the old...

This Note outlines a conceptual framework for defining and analyzing innovation in the professional practice of medicine and law. The two professions have structural and historical similarities, and both are organized around the principal-agent relationship. Some types of professional activity adhere to the traditional agency model of principal-centered practice, but innovative professionals who develop novel tools and techniques often deviate from the agency model in interesting ways. This Note explores how that distinction plays out by identifying examples from academic medicine, public interest "cause lawyering", and corporate law...

In the employer-sponsored insurance market that covers most Americans; many workers are "underinsured." The evidence shows onerous out-of-pocket payments causing them to forgo needed care, miss work, and fall into bankruptcies and foreclosures. Nonetheless, many higher-paid workers are "overinsured": the evidence shows that in this domain, surplus insurance stimulates spending and price inflation without improving health. Employers can solve these problems together by scaling cost-sharing to wages. This reform would make insurance better protect against risk and guarantee access to care, while maintaining or even reducing insurance premiums...

This Note assesses the effect of laws that specifically criminalize behaviors that expose others to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This Note examines the relationship between HIV testing decisions by high-risk individuals and the existence of these HIV-specific statutes, as well as the amount of media coverage related to them. One of the main reasons public health experts criticize criminalization of HIV-exposing behavior is that it may discourage at-risk individuals from undergoing HIV testing. This argument, however, remains empirically untested to date...

Biomedical research involving human subjects has traditionally been treated as a unique endeavor, presenting special risks and demanding special protections. But in several ways, the regulatory scheme governing human subjects research is counter-intuitively less protective than the labor and employment laws applicable to many workers. This Article relies on analogical and legal reasoning to demonstrate that this should not be the case; in a number of ways, human research subjects ought to be fundamentally recast as human research workers...

Between January 2009 and October 2013, 49 states and the District of Columbia passed laws focusing on mitigating the consequences of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in organized youth sports. Using historical, contextual, and empirical methods, this Article describes the content, goals, and structure of youth sports TBI laws, while hypothesizing about their underlying legislative logic and long-term public health consequences. The Article's empirical evidence suggests two key findings: first, that a dominant interest group, the National Football League, helped to define the problem and its associated solutions for the vast majority of states, thus curving the legislative story are in favor of its policy prescriptions; second, that existing youth sports TBI laws are focused on secondary, not primary, prevention, and may thus shift attention away from more comprehensive solutions...

Acute episodes of mental illness temporarily destroy the capacity required to give informed consent and often prevent people from realizing they are sick, causing them to refuse intervention. Once a person refuses treatment, the only way to obtain care is as an involuntary patient. Even in the midst of acute episodes, many people do not meet commitment criteria because they are not likely to injure themselves or others and are still able to care for their basic needs. Left untreated, the episode will likely spiral out of control...

October 2011 marked the 25th Anniversary of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), which was celebrated for its "significant role in protecting human health and the environment over the last quarter century by providing communities and emergency planners with valuable information on toxic chemical releases in their area." This Note aims to evaluate the effectiveness of three important provisions of the statute-the Toxics Release Inventory, the emergency planning mandate, and the citizen suit provision-through a case study of their implementation in Institute, West Virginia, the site of an industrial accident that prompted the enactment of EPCRA in 1986...

The adverse effects of smoking have fostered a natural market for smoking cessation and smoking reduction products. Smokers attempting to quit or reduce consumption have tried everything: "low" or "light" cigarettes; nicotine-infused chewing gum, lozenges, and lollipops; dermal patches; and even hypnosis. The latest craze in the quest to find a safer source of nicotine is the electronic cigarette. Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have swept the market, reaching a rapidly expanding international consumer base...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and its amendments by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 constitute landmark legislation known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA has made many changes in the Medicare program as part of comprehensive health reform for the U.S. health care sector. Title III of the ACA pertains to improving the efficiency and quality of health care. Title VI calls for greater program integrity for all federally funded health insurance programs. Collectively, the changes in Medicare in these two titles address the three major problems that the Medicare program has faced since its inception: cost and volume inflation, quality assurance, and fraud and abuse...

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The most contentious, unresolved issue in biomedicine in the last twenty-five years has been how to best address compensated partnerships between academic researchers and the pharmaceutical industry. Law and policy deliberately promote these partnerships through intellectual property law, research funding programs, and drug and device approval pathways while simultaneously condemning them through conflict-of-interest (COI) regulations. These regulations have not been subjected to the close scrutiny that is typically utilized in administrative law to evaluate and improve regulatory systems...

This Article examines Americans' enduring demand for freedom of therapeutic choice as a popular constitutional movement originating in the United States' early years. In exploring extrajudicial advocacy for therapeutic choice between the American Revolution and the Civil War, this piece illustrates how multiple concepts of freedom in addition to bodily freedom bolstered the concept of a constitutional right to medical liberty. There is a deep current of belief in the United States that people have a right to choose their preferred treatments without government interference...

Global health inequities cause nearly 20 million deaths annually, mostly among the world's poor. Yet international law currently does little to reduce the massive inequalities that underlie these deaths. This Article offers the first systematic account of the goals and justifications, normative foundations, and potential construction of a proposed new global health treaty, a Framework Convention on Global Health (FCGH), grounded in the human right to health. Already endorsed by the United Nations Secretary-General, the FCGH would reimagine global governance for health, offering a new, post-Millennium Development Goals vision...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.