LAW 452: Health Law

This is a survey of the four major parts of "Health Law": (1) Regulation, Finance, and Policy; (2) Medical Liability; (3) Bioethics; and (4) Public Health. Part (1) relates to how we do, could, and should regulate and finance the medical industry, aka the Medical Industrial Complex, which makes up around 17 percent of our gross domestic product. It is the biggest economic sector of our economy. The major law, among a complex web of laws, that regulates this Complex, is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("ACA") - sometimes referred to as "Obama Care." Part (2) relates to how we do, could, and should prevent and provide compensation for injuries caused by individual and institutional health care providers and regulators. Part (3) relates to ethical and legal issues raised by advances in biomedical technology, e.g., questions about medical research, behavioral and neurological control, death and dying, transplantation and implantation, reproductive technologies, and genetic "engineering." Part (4), in the words of Professor Gostin, is "the study of the legal powers and duties of the [government], in collaboration with its partners (e.g., health care, business, the community, the media, and academe), to ensure the conditions for people to be healthy, and of the limitations on [that] power... to constrain the autonomy, privacy, liberty, proprietary, and other legally protected interests of individuals."