Newsgathering in Light of HIPAA

This short piece examines the interaction between the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law designed to protect the privacy of individuals’ health information, and state Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, which are designed to ensure public access to government documents. It describes three recent cases from different states that addressed difficult issues about where and how to draw the line between the public’s right to know and individuals’ rights to keep their medical information secret. It concludes that questions about the interaction of state FOI laws and HIPAA should be guided by the framework suggested in HIPAA regulations for understanding the interaction between HIPAA and the federal Freedom of Information Act. State courts and agencies should therefore use the provisions in state FOI laws that regard medical privacy to inform decisions about information requests from citizens and the media

Public-Private Partnerships and Insurance Regulation

A public-private partnership (PPP) is an institutional arrangement that embodies a collaborative approach to policy and regulation; it is a joint venture between the government and one or more private sector entities. Joint financing partnerships link public financing and private insurance to pay for certain social goods. Where the financing for social goods is fragmented and overlapping, as it is for health and social care, joint financing PPPs may help organize existing financing streams. This piece argues that partnerships of this type also present an opportunity for consumer-protective regulation of the insurance industry if certain conditions are met. Private insurers must perceive benefits to the partnership, government actors must be motivated to protect the government’s financial stake, and government interests must align with those of consumers. It uses the Medicaid Partnership for Long-Term Care to illustrate the argument

Public-Private Partnerships and Insurance Regulation

A public-private partnership (PPP) is an institutional arrangement that embodies a collaborative approach to policy and regulation; it is a joint venture between the government and one or more private sector entities. Joint financing partnerships link public financing and private insurance to pay for certain social goods. Where the financing for social goods is fragmented and overlapping, as it is for health and social care, joint financing PPPs may help organize existing financing streams. This piece argues that partnerships of this type also present an opportunity for consumer-protective regulation of the insurance industry if certain conditions are met. Private insurers must perceive benefits to the partnership, government actors must be motivated to protect the government’s financial stake, and government interests must align with those of consumers. It uses the Medicaid Partnership for Long-Term Care to illustrate the argument

Legal Age

How old are you? This deceptively simple question has a clear answer in the law, which is a number measuring the amount of time that has elapsed since birth. However, as scientists discover various biomarkers of human aging and individuals openly embrace more fluid identities, this chronological definition will soon have to compete with biological and subjective alternatives. Legal scholars have previously examined the role of age in the legal system, but they have done so assuming a chronological definition. This is the first Article to examine critically the antecedent question of how we should define legal age after one has reached adulthood. The stakes for this definition are high. Age is ubiquitous in the legal landscape, appearing in the Constitution, antidiscrimination statutes, criminal laws, and public benefits programs. This Article normatively assesses the chronological, biological, and subjective conceptions of age, examining how well they improve the accuracy of the legal system, impact administrative costs, promote autonomy interests, and further antisubordination goals. It then charts three potential paths forward for legal age: abolishing age as a meaningful legal category for adults, particularizing the definition of legal age based on context, and reforming the chronological status quo through the calibration of existing age-based law

A System for Interactive Assessment and Management in Palliative Care

The availability of psychometrically sound and clinically relevant screening, diagnosis, and outcome evaluation tools is essential to high-quality palliative care assessment and management. Such data will enable us to improve patient evaluations, prognoses, and treatment selections, and to increase patient satisfaction and quality of life. To accomplish these goals, medical care needs more precise, efficient, and comprehensive tools for data acquisition, analysis, interpretation, and management. We describe a system for interactive assessment and management in palliative care (SIAM-PC), which is patient centered, model driven, database derived, evidence based, and technology assisted. The SIAM-PC is designed to reliably measure the multiple dimensions of patients’ needs for palliative care, and then to provide information to clinicians, patients, and the patients’ families to achieve optimal patient care, while improving our capacity for doing palliative care research. This system is innovative in its application of the state-of-the-science approaches, such as item response theory and computerized adaptive testing, to many of the significant clinical problems related to palliative care

The Business of Employing People with Disabilities: Four Case Studies

This exploratory study examines employer attitudes towards people with disabilities in the labor market. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior management, human resources staff, directors of diversity, and hiring managers at four corporations, it pinpoints reasons why businesses chose to hire people with disabilities, investigates the perceived benefits and barriers to hiring people with disabilities, and identifies strategies for successfully hiring and retaining workers with disabilities. It fills a gap in examining the attitudes and decision-making processes of U.S. companies that have been leaders in hiring people with disabilities, as well as delving into the special issues of small businesses that may lack exposure to disability employment. It closes with directions for future studies that could extend our understanding of employment of people with disabilities