Patients in the United States are routinely undertreated for pain. This problem has been widely recognized and documented in medical literature. In a seminal medical study of end-of-life care, researchers found that 50% of all patients who died during hospitalization quot;experienced moderate or...

This Article argues that the interaction of international norms and local culture is a central factor in the creation and transformation of legal rules. Like Alan Watson's influential theory of legal transplants, it emphasizes that legal change is frequently a consequence of learning from other...

Previous literature indicates that non-economic damages caps increase the number of physicians but finds no significant effect on health. A potential explanation is that, by reducing the cost of malpractice, caps affect physicians’ incentives to provide high quality care, an important...

The U.S. medical malpractice liability system has two principal objectives: to compensate patients who are injured through the negligence of healthcare providers and to deter providers from practicing negligently. In practice, however, the system is slow and costly to administer. It both fails...

I explore the association between regional variations in physician behavior and the geographical scope of malpractice standards of care. I estimate a 30-50 percent reduction in the gap between state and national utilization rates of various treatments and diagnostic procedures following the...

This Article briefly describes the key features of the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act, focusing particularly on the Connector. It then offers preliminary thoughts on the expected effect of that mechanism for creating quality, affordable health insurance products for individuals. Observers...

Employment-based health insurance is the Rodney Dangerfield of U.S. health policy: it gets no respect from anyone. Employment-based coverage (quot;EBCquot;) may not get much respect, but it covers roughly 177 million people - and it appears to have considerable staying power - even if the...

The commonwealth cannot be equated with the state nor can the common good of society be sustained by government action alone. Rather, the activities of all members of society are crucial importance. Such private sector activities also define the development of national healthcare markets in the...

Comparing the safety of prescription drugs over time is difficult due to the paucity of reliable quantitative measures of drug safety. Both the academic literature and popular press have focused on drug withdrawals as a proxy for breakdowns in the drug safety system. This metric, however, is...