Health Law and Policy

Health Law and Policy - Professor Barbara Safriet

• Course Number: LAW-560
• Course Type: Foundational
• Credits: 3
• Enrollment Limit: Determined by the Registrar
• Description:

  This course will focus on a variety of current legal and policy issues in the financing and delivery of health care in the United States. A summary of course coverage includes the following:

  - A comparative review of other countries’ delivery and payment laws and practices

  - Identification of legal provisions which create or amplify continuing problems with Access to, and the Costs and Quality of health care in the US

  - Recent efforts to address some of these problems - the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, and its current implementation

  - The division (and overlap) of federal and state responsibilities/authority over payment for and the qualifications of individual and institutional health care providers

  - The central role of non-governmental entities in determining enforceable standards

  - Constitutional and statutory implications for the “right to care”, or “to refuse care”, or to “die with dignity”

  - The role and scope of Public Health, with its focus on population rather than individual health: Governmental legal powers, duties and limits

• Prerequisite: none
• Evaluation Method: Attendance and participation, comments on weekly readings, Project paper.
• Capstone: yes, with professor permission
• WIE: yes, with professor permission