Health Law and Administration (2-3 credits). Overview: This course offers a broad survey of legal and policy issues relevant to health care lawyers, policy makers and other critical health care stakeholders (i.e., consumers). It provides an overview of the structure of the American health care delivery and financing systems and examines the common law, statutes, and regulations that affect hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers. It explores how health care regulation may help or hinder increasing access, reducing cost, and improving quality. The recently enacted health reform – its promise, likely constraints and legal and policy ramifications – will be an important discussion topic throughout the course.

Philosophy: Health Law as a domain is hard to define. It is a course about a profession (medicine) and the contracts and torts associated with its practice, but it is also a course -- increasingly -- about the business of health care and the duties and liabilities associated with that. While the cases we will study may involve a plaintiff and a defendant, it is very difficult to understand these cases outside of the various stakeholders that are involved in health care. Moreover, given the fragmented nature of health systems and our public governance of them, it is critical that lawyers understand the health care stakeholder field and the interests, incentives and priorities of its various players. Throughout the course, we will revisit several theoretical questions related to the health law issues we are studying: (i) which stakeholder interest(s) are relevant to the cases, laws or regulations we are reviewing and do they a priori affect the outcome; (ii) which legal form (branch and/or level of government) should be used to reach a particular health goal or outcome; (iii) the role of standards versus judgment or discretion; and (iv) the differences between health services and public health interests.