LAWS7654 · Law

Federal Health Law, Policy, and Politics

Boston College Law School

Satisfies the Upper Level Writing Requirement and the Perspectives Requirement. This course will evaluate; the reasons for the US health care system's high costs & poor outcomes; the Affordable Care Act's methods, successes & failures in expanding access to, & improving the quality & cost of health care; judicial & legislative challenges to the ACA's individual & employer mandates, Medicaid expansion, subsidized coverage & mandated benefits (including no-cost contraceptives); GOP efforts to repair, repeal or replace the ACA; & emerging challenges to the Trump Administration's use of executive orders, suspension of notice and comment rulemaking & incremental legislation to destabilize the ACA & change access to health care and coverage. We will also examine two of the nation's most urgent public health crises; gun violence & the opiod epidemic. Both increase mortality, morbidity & costs. Both illustrate the adverse impact of inconsistent laws & policies for individuals, health care providers, private industry and lobbyists, and state & fed. government. Both demonstrate the increasing importance of litigation in seeking redress for the unsustainable costs & unbearable health burdens that federal policies have shifted to states, municipalities & individuals. Both underscore the importance of law in promoting and impeding public & personal health. The course is NOT intended to instill a particular point of view but only to enable your own views, criticisms and disagreements to be informed by reality, not myth. No need for an interest in practicing health law