Will Employers Undermine Health Care Reform by Dumping Sick Employees?

This Article argues that federal health care reform may induce employers to redesign their health plans so that low-risk employees retain employer-sponsored insurance (“ESI”) but high-risk employees opt out of ESI in favor of insurance available on the individual market. It shows that such a strategy would shift health care expenses for high-risk employees from employers and their low-risk employees to the public at large. Not only would this undermine the spirit of health care reform, but it would jeopardize the sustainability of the insurance exchanges that are designed to organize individual insurance markets starting in 2014. In particular, it would expose these exchanges to adverse selection caused by the entrance of a disproportionately high-risk segment of the population into the insured pool. This, in turn, would increase the cost to the federal government of subsidizing coverage for qualified individuals and exempt more people from complying with the so-called individual mandate, thus producing further adverse selection. Because this type of targeted employer dumping has been overlooked in public policy debates, lawmakers have failed to act on various straight-forward responses to the underlying problem. The Article concludes by offering several such solutions, which could be implemented either by legislatures or, in some cases, by federal regulators. A response to this Article by David Hyman, entitled PPACA in Theory and Practice: The Perils of Parallelism, is available here: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1826292. health care reform, employer health insurance, health insurance market

ChatGPT Goes to Law School

How well can AI models write law school exams without human assistance? To find out, we used the widely publicized AI model ChatGPT to generate answers to the final exams for four classes at the University of Minnesota Law School. We then blindly graded these exams as part of our regular grading processes for each class. Over ninety-five multiple-choice questions and twelve essay questions, ChatGPT performed on average at the level of a C+ student, achieving a low but passing grade in all four courses. After detailing these results, we discuss their implications for legal education and lawyering. We also provide example prompts and advice on how ChatGPT can assist with legal writing

A ética do silêncio racial no contexto urbano: políticas públicas e desigualdade social no Recife, 1900-1940

Mais de meio século após o preconceito racial ter se tornado o principal alvo dos movimentos urbanos pelos direitos civis nos Estados Unidos e na África do Sul, e décadas depois do surgimento dos movimentos negros contemporâneos no Brasil, o conjunto de ferramentas legislativas criado no Brasil para promover o direito à cidade ainda adere à longa tradição brasileira de silêncio acerca da questão racial. Este artigo propõe iniciar uma exploração das raízes históricas desse fenômeno, remontando ao surgimento do silêncio sobre a questão racial na política urbana do Recife, Brasil, durante a primeira metade do século XX. O Recife foi eé um exemplo paradigmático do processo pelo qual uma cidade amplamente marcada por traços negros e africanos chegou a ser definida política e legalmente como um espaço pobre, subdesenvolvido e racialmente neutro, onde as desigualdades sociais originaram na exclusão capitalista, e não na escravidão e nas ideologias do racismo científico. Neste sentido, Recife lança luzes sobre a política urbana que se gerou sob a sombra do silêncio racial.More than half a century after racial prejudice became central to urban civil rights movements in the United States and South Africa, and decades after the emergence of Brazil’s contemporary Black movements, Brazil's internationally recognized body of rights-to-the-city legislation still adheres to the country's long historical tradition of racial silence. This article explores the historical roots of this phenomenon by focusing on the emergence of racial silence in Recife, Brazil during the first half of the 20th Century. Recife was and remains a paradigmatic example of the process through which a city marked by its Black and African roots came to be legally and politically defined as a poor, underdeveloped and racially neutral space, where social inequalities derived from capitalist exclusion rather than from slavery and scientific racism. As such, Recife'sexperience sheds light on the urban policies that were generated in the shadow of racial silence

From gut dysbiosis to altered brain function and mental illness: mechanisms and pathways

The human body hosts an enormous abundance and diversity of microbes, which perform a range of essential and beneficial functions. Our appreciation of the importance of these microbial communities to many aspects of human physiology has grown dramatically in recent years. We know, for example, that animals raised in a germ-free environment exhibit substantially altered immune and metabolic function, while the disruption of commensal microbiota in humans is associated with the development of a growing number of diseases. Evidence is now emerging that, through interactions with the gut-brain axis, the bidirectional communication system between the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract, the gut microbiome can also influence neural development, cognition and behaviour, with recent evidence that changes in behaviour alter gut microbiota composition, while modifications of the microbiome can induce depressive-like behaviours. Although an association between enteropathy and certain psychiatric conditions has long been recognized, it now appears that gut microbes represent direct mediators of psychopathology. Here, we examine roles of gut microbiome in shaping brain development and neurological function, and the mechanisms by which it can contribute to mental illness. Further, we discuss how the insight provided by this new and exciting field of research can inform care and provide a basis for the design of novel, microbiota-targeted, therapies.GB Rogers, DJ Keating, RL Young, M-L Wong, J Licinio, and S Wesseling