LAW 316P - Health Law Practicum.

This practicum will survey health law and policy through the lens of landmark cases. It pairs an in-depth consideration of landmark cases and the stories behind those cases with simulated exercises that emphasize the challenges that modern medicine poses for healthcare providers, insurers, patients, regulators, and policymakers. It takes students through the hospital-patient relationship, including special rules governing institutional liability, nonprofit organizations and tax-exempt status; the doctor-patient relationship and quality of care, including conflicts of interests and informed consent; the billing of healthcare services by facilities, physicians, and other providers, including special rules governing civil false claims and “kickbacks;” death and dying, focusing on the Quinlan, Cruzan and Schiavo cases; reproductive rights, including assisted conception, surrogate parenting arrangements, and ownership and disposition of frozen embryos; healthcare rationing and medical futility, including how the law should treat anencephalic children; organ transplantation, the donation of human tissues (like gametes), and presumed consent laws, including how the law should treat the organs of the newly dead; and public health challenges and the limits of the state’s police powers. Through simulated exercises, students will become familiarized with a number of cutting-edge arrangements in modern medicine, and how to protect the parties to those arrangements. One such exercise would be to evaluate the disclosure given to subjects in a human research trial or to women who donate eggs for assisted conception by others. These exercises are intended to convey the broad range of skills and values that a lawyer must possess to provide competent counsel to healthcare clients. Five hours. Not offered in 2012-2013.