In July 2009, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a memorandum urging local Public Housing Authorities to implement no-smoking policies in some or all of their public housing units. To date, only an estimated 4% of PHAs have done so, despite strong public health evidence that...

Growing awareness of the role that food and beverage advertising plays in the epidemic of childhood obesity has prompted calls for stricter oversight of advertising practices. The food and beverage industries have taken voluntary steps in this direction, but many commentators have called for...

On December 3, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit handed the government yet another setback in its quest to stem the deleterious public health effects of aggressive pharmaceutical marketing. United States v. Caronia involved a First Amendment challenge to a...

In the 1990s more than 41,000 patients underwent high-dose chemotherapy plus autologous bone marrow transplant (HDC-ABMT) for breast cancer, despite a paucity of clinical evidence of its efficacy. Most health plans reluctantly agreed to cover the treatment in response to intensive political...

A major point of contention in the policy debates over tort reforms during the most recent malpractice "crisis" has been whether rising liability insurance costs lead physicians to relocate to lower-cost states, restrict the scope of their practice (for example, by eliminating high-risk...

A recent wave of litigation against nonprofit hospitals highlights the peculiar position they occupy in the American health care system. The lawsuits allege that the hospitals have broken their covenant with the community and morphed into profit-seeking businesses. Similar concerns have emerged...

Pressure is increasing for physicians and hospitals to be more open with patients about medical errors and adverse events. An oft-heard view in policy discussions is that fuller disclosure will reduce malpractice litigation, because many patients will come to understand that their injury was not...

Many U.S. states are now in their fifth year of a medical malpractice "crisis", a period of volatility in the malpractice insurance market characterized by above average increases in premiums, contractions in the supply of insurance and deterioration in the financial health of carriers....

Studdert et al examine why making compensation of noneconomic damages in personal-injury litigation more rational and predictable is socially valuable. Noneconomic-damages schedules as an alternative to caps are discussed, several potential approaches to construction of schedules are reviewed,...