The First Fifty Years: Health Law\u27s Greatest Hit

In honor of the Syracuse Law Review\u27s 50th Anniversary, this article considers various developments in health law and concludes that the passage of the Medicare amendments to the Social Security Act has had the most significant impact on the field. The article discusses the impact of Medicare on the culture of hospitals and their medical staffs, on the development and dissemination of new technologies, and on restructuring and reforming the industry in key areas, including fraud and abuse, patient dumping, organ donation, advance directives, patients\u27 rights, and other agencies\u27 regulation of health care providers

The Baby Doe Rules and Texas’s \u27Futility Law\u27 in the NICU

The applicability in the NICU of the futility provision of Texas\u27s Advance Directives Act and its relationship to the Baby Doe rules are reasonably straightforward. Nonetheless, many comments have been written about Texas\u27s so-called “futility law,” some of them complimentary and others, not so much. The most serious critiques of the Texas futility provision, however, are based upon assumptions that result from a fundamental misreading of the law. After a brief discussion of the futility provision and its principal features, this Essay examines the misunderstandings that plague many critiques of the law and then offers a list of proposed amendments to the law that address some of the actual deficiencies in the futility provision

Sex, Marriage, Medicine, and Law: \u27What Hope of Harmony?\u27

This essay offers a critique of the Kansas Supreme Court\u27s decision in In re Estate of Gardiner, 42 P.3d 120 (Kan. 2002), and similar cases that hold that for purposes of the opposite-sex marriage rule, an individual\u27s sex is determined at birth, is genetically fixed, and cannot be changed through surgery or hormone therapy. The result for transgendered individuals is a legal regime that is hostile to medical care that brings external sex characteristics into line with sexual identity. The result for society is a legal rule that is at odds with scientific opinion. Finally, the result for the opposite-sex marriage rule is that one type of same-sex marriage is replaced by another type of same-sex marriage (e.g., when a genetic male who undergoes sex-change therapy is permitted to marry a genetic female). The essay ends with a plea for a reconciliation of legal doctrine with established scientific and medical opinion, using the neurological criteria for the determination of death as an example of a (mostly) successful example of such a reconciliation

Health Care Law

The author introduces health care law in the state of Texas describing developments pertaining to public health, health care providers, patient issues, medical records and devices, and liability rules. Several Texas cases are examined: Baptist Memorial Hospital System v. Sampson; Van Horn v. Chambers; Attaya v. Shoukfeh; Levy v. Texas State Board of Medical Examiners; Clark v. Texas Home Health, Inc.; Austin v. Healthtrust, Inc-The Hospital Co.; Brown v. Shwarts; Dallas County Mental Health & Mental Retardation v. Bossley; Stolle v. Baylor College of Medicine; United States ex rel Riley v. St. Luke’s Episopal Hospital;and United States ex rel v. Thompson v. Columbi/HCA Healthcare Corp. Although the focus of this Survey is developments in Texas law, a few federal developments important to health care providers and health law practitioners are also briefly discussed